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Animalcules
Animalcule ('little animal', from Latin ''animal'' + the diminutive suffix ''-culum'') is an old term for microscopic organisms that included bacteria, protozoans, and very small animals. The word was invented by 17th-century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to refer to the microorganisms he observed in rainwater. Some better-known types of animalcule include: * '' Actinophrys'', and other heliozoa, termed sun animalcules. * ''Amoeba'', termed ''Proteus'' animalcules. * '' Noctiluca scintillans'', commonly termed the sea sparkles. * ''Paramecium'', termed slipper animalcules. * ''Rotifers'', termed wheel animalcules. * '' Stentor'', termed trumpet animalcules. * ''Vorticella'', and other peritrichs, termed bell animalcules. The concept seems to have been proposed at least as early as about 30 BC, as evidenced by this translation from Marcus Varro's ''Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres'': Note also if there be any swampy ground, both for the reasons given above, and because ce ...
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Animalcules Observed By Anton Van Leeuwenhoek C1795 1228575
Animalcule ('little animal', from Latin ''animal'' + the diminutive suffix ''-culum'') is an old term for microscopic organisms that included bacteria, protozoans, and very small animals. The word was invented by 17th-century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to refer to the microorganisms he observed in rainwater. Some better-known types of animalcule include: * ''Actinophrys'', and other heliozoa, termed sun animalcules. * '' Amoeba'', termed ''Proteus'' animalcules. * ''Noctiluca scintillans'', commonly termed the sea sparkles. * '' Paramecium'', termed slipper animalcules. * ''Rotifers'', termed wheel animalcules. * ''Stentor'', termed trumpet animalcules. * ''Vorticella'', and other peritrichs, termed bell animalcules. The concept seems to have been proposed at least as early as about 30 BC, as evidenced by this translation from Marcus Varro's ''Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres'': Note also if there be any swampy ground, both for the reasons given above, and because ...
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Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek ( ; ; 24 October 1632 – 26 August 1723) was a Dutch microbiologist and microscopist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as " the Father of Microbiology", and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his pioneering work in microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline. Raised in Delft, Dutch Republic, van Leeuwenhoek worked as a draper in his youth and founded his own shop in 1654. He became well recognized in municipal politics and developed an interest in lensmaking. In the 1670s, he started to explore microbial life with his microscope. This was one of the notable achievements of the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (). Using single-lensed microscopes of his own design and make, van Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe and to experiment with ...
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Heliozoa
Heliozoa, commonly known as sun-animalcules, are microbial eukaryotes (protists) with stiff arms (axopodia) radiating from their spherical bodies, which are responsible for their common name. The axopodia are microtubule-supported projections from the amoeboid cell body, and are variously used for capturing food, sensation, movement, and attachment. They are similar to Radiolaria, but they are distinguished from them by lacking central capsules and other complex skeletal elements, although some produce simple scales and spines. They may be found in both freshwater and marine environments. Classification Originally the heliozoa were treated together as a formal taxon Heliozoa or Heliozoea, with the rank of class or phylum, but it has been realised that they are polyphyletic, as the various orders show notable differences and are no longer believed to be descended from a single common ancestor. Instead, "heliozoa" is regarded as a descriptive term applying to various lines of protis ...
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Caminalcule
Caminalcules are a fictive group of animal-like life forms, which were created as a tool for better understanding phylogenetics in real organisms. They were created by Joseph H. Camin (University of Kansas) and consist of 29 living 'species' and 48 fossil forms. The name of the taxon Caminalcules seems to come from Camin's last name and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's animalcules. History Joseph H. Camin (1922–1979) drew the Caminalcules in the early 1960s or possibly even earlier to study the nature of taxonomic judgement. He assured that there was genetic continuity in the Caminalcules by the preservation of all characters except for changes that he desired in all successive animals. He did not keep track of the changes he made in the different species. The images of the Caminalcules were made using master stencils. The images of the living OTUs (29 species) were made available in the early 1960s; those of the fossil ones (48 species) later in the decade. These images were copie ...
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Actinophryid
The actinophryids are an order of heliozoa, a polyphyletic array of stramenopiles, having a close relationship with pedinellids and ''Ciliophrys''. They are common in fresh water and occasionally found in marine and soil habitats. Actinophryids are unicellular and roughly spherical in shape, with many axopodia that radiate outward from the cell body. Axopodia are a type of pseudopodia that are supported by hundreds of microtubules arranged in interlocking spirals and forming a needle-like internal structure or axoneme. Small granules, extrusomes, that lie under the membrane of the body and axopodia capture flagellates, ciliates and small metazoa that make contact with the arms. Description Actinophryids are largely aquatic protozoa with a spherical cell body and many needle-like axopodia. They resemble the shape of a sun due to this structure, which is the inspiration for their common name: heliozoa, or "sun-animalcules". Their bodies, without arms, range in size from a few tens ...
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Rotifer
The rotifers (, from the Latin , "wheel", and , "bearing"), commonly called wheel animals or wheel animalcules, make up a phylum (Rotifera ) of microscopic and near-microscopic pseudocoelomate animals. They were first described by Rev. John Harris in 1696, and other forms were described by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1703. Most rotifers are around long (although their size can range from to over ), and are common in freshwater environments throughout the world with a few saltwater species. Some rotifers are free swimming and truly planktonic, others move by inchworming along a substrate, and some are sessile, living inside tubes or gelatinous holdfasts that are attached to a substrate. About 25 species are colonial (e.g., ''Sinantherina semibullata''), either sessile or planktonic. Rotifers are an important part of the freshwater zooplankton, being a major foodsource and with many species also contributing to the decomposition of soil organic matter. Most species of the r ...
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Stentor (genus)
''Stentor'', sometimes called trumpet animalcules, are a genus of filter-feeding, heterotrophic ciliates, representative of the heterotrichs. They are usually horn-shaped, and reach lengths of two millimeters; as such, they are among the largest known extant unicellular organisms. They reproduce asexually through binary fission. Description The body, or cortex, is generally horn-shaped, hence the association with the Greek herald, and the former name "trumpet animalcule". A ring of prominent cilia around the anterior "bell" sweep in food and aid in swimming. Some reach several millimeters in length, making them among the largest single-celled organisms. ''Stentor'' can come in different colors: for example, ''S. coeruleus'' can appear blue due to the presence of stentorin, a natural pigment. As in many freshwater protozoans, ''Stentor'' has a contractile vacuole. Because the concentration of salt inside the cell and in the surrounding freshwater is different, ''Stentor'' must ...
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Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four ...
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Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. , there are about 1,700 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS ( Fellow of ...
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Microscopic Discovery Of Microorganisms
A microorganism, or microbe,, ''mikros'', "small") and ''organism'' from the el, ὀργανισμός, ''organismós'', "organism"). It is usually written as a single word but is sometimes hyphenated (''micro-organism''), especially in older texts. The informal synonym ''microbe'' () comes from μικρός, mikrós, "small" and βίος, bíos, "life". is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from ancient times, such as in Jain scriptures from sixth century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax. Because mi ...
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Infusoria
Infusoria are minute freshwater life forms including ciliates, euglenoids, protozoa, unicellular algae and small invertebrates. Some authors (e.g., Bütschli) used the term as a synonym for Ciliophora. In modern formal classifications, the term is considered obsolete; the microorganisms previously included in the Infusoria are mostly assigned to the kingdom Protista. Aquarium use Infusoria are used by owners of aquaria to feed fish fry; because of its small size it can be used to rear newly hatched fry of many common aquarium species. Many home aquaria are unable to naturally supply sufficient infusoria for fish-rearing, so hobbyists may create and maintain their own supply cultures Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these grou ... or use one of the many commercial cultures ...
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hundreds of b ...
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