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Updated: June 24, 2025
It is true one may argue that the zoospores of certain cryptogamia exhibit similar movements; but do not these zoospores possess as much of an animal nature as do the spermatozoa?
Nevertheless, consciousness and unconsciousness mark the directions in which the two kingdoms have developed, in this sense, that to find the best specimens of consciousness in the animal we must ascend to the highest representatives of the series, whereas, to find probable cases of vegetable consciousness, we must descend as low as possible in the scale of plants down to the zoospores of the algae, for instance, and, more generally, to those unicellular organisms which may be said to hesitate between the vegetable form and animality.
The eminent botanist, De Bary, who was not thinking of our problem, tells us, in describing the movements of these "Zoospores," that, as they swim about, "Foreign bodies are carefully avoided, and the whole movement has a deceptive likeness to the voluntary changes of place which are observed in microscopic animals."
Cell contents uniform, dense, cell division accompanied by circumscissile debiscence of the parent cell, producing rings on the filaments. Reproduction by zoospores formed of the whole contents of a cell, with a crown of numerous cilia; resting spores formed in sporangial cells after fecundation by ciliated spermatozoids formed in antheridial cells.
Fructification: zoospores produced from the cell contents of the filaments; resting spores formed from the contents of particular cells after impregnation by ciliated spermatozoids produced in distinct antheridial cells. Coleochaetae. Confervaceae. Not conjugating. Zygnemaceae. Aquatic filamentous plants, without evident gelatine, composed of series of cylindrical cells, straight or curved.
By subjecting the cilia to the action of iodine, their motion is arrested, they are stained brown, and become very plainly visible. Eminent English authorities have advanced the theory that the ciliated gonidium of Vaucheria is in reality a densely crowded aggregation of biciliated zoospores, similar to those found in many other confervoid algæ.
Volvocineae. Microscopic cellular fresh water plants, composed of groups of bodies resembling zoospores connected into a definite form by their enveloping membranes. The families are formed either of assemblages of coated zoospores united in a definite form by the cohesion of their membranes, or assemblages of naked zoospores inclosed in a common investing membrane.
These free-swimming cells, which apparently are formed only to reunite with each other, are called zoöspores, while the organism which results from their fusion is known as a zygospore. The zygospore thus formed slowly increases in size, until it in its turn develops a new generation of zoöspores.
Nay, among these lowest types of living things, it is common for the life to be now predominantly animal and presently to become predominantly vegetal. The very name zoospores, given to germs of algæ, which for a while swim about actively by means of cilia, and presently settling down grow into plant-forms, is given because of this conspicuous community of nature.
Fructification: by zoospores, either single or very numerous, and by resting spores formed in sporangial cells after the contents have been impregnated by the contents of autheridial cells of different forms. 8 Oscillatoriaceae. Plants growing either in the sea, fresh water, or on damp ground, of a gelatinous substance and filamentous structure.
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