Among plants, some of the algae possess ameboid protoplasts at one stage
or another of their life cycle, but the details of streaming have not
been made out. It has been reported however that the zoospores of some
parasitic fungi move to all appearances exactly like small amebas. We
likewise lack details of the streaming of the myxomycete plasmodia. From
a more or less cursory examination of a small aquatic plasmodium of
undetermined species, it appeared that the formation of pseudopods and
the process of streaming were quite different from similar processes in
the foraminifera. The pseudopods do not act independently as in
foraminifera. At almost the same moment the protoplasm begins to flow
from the pseudopods in a large section of the plasmodium and into
another section; then soon thereafter the protoplasm flows back again.
This oscillatory streaming is continued presumably as long as the
myxomycete is in the plasmodial stage. With every change in the
direction of movement of streaming, there is produced, however, a change
in the shapes of the pseudopods, so that with a number of oscillations
in streaming an appreciable degree of locomotion is effected. The
direction of locomotion can be markedly affected by changes in light
intensity and moisture distribution, as shown by the observations of
Baranetzsky (’76), Stahl (’84) and others, but just how these changes in
the direction of locomotion were produced is not recorded. There is a
definite ectoplasm and a definite endoplasm in the myxomycete plasmodia,
but the details of their transformations, the one into the other, have
not been determined; but since the surface layer is stationary, it is
probable that there is no such regular transformation of endoplasm into
ectoplasm at the anterior ends of pseudopods as there is in ameba. But
this phase of the subject needs further investigation before any
conclusions can be drawn. The power of contractility is present, but
apparently only to a slight degree. Too little is known of the streaming
process in these organisms to compare it in detail with the same
phenomenon in rhizopods.
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