THE METHOD BY WHICH TRICHONYMPHA CAM- 

 PANULA, A PROTOZOON IX THE INTESTINE OF 

 TERMITES, INGESTS SOLID PARTICLES OF 

 WOOD FOR FOOD. 



L. R. CLEVELAND." 



The intestinal protozoa of wood-feeding termites represent a 

 unique and peculiarly interesting faunal association. The pro- 

 tozoa, very abundant both in form and number and completely 

 filling the large and much distended gut of their host, take into 

 their bodies and digest practically all the wood which the termites 

 eat. The termites themselves cannot digest wood or cellulose, 

 and hence cannot live on wood, their normal diet, without pro- 

 tozoa to digest it for them. 



From one third to one half the body of Trichonympha cam- 

 panula, the largest and principal wood-ingesting protozoon har- 

 bored by Termopsis, is filled with wood fragments, though the 

 method employed in taking them in has been a complete mystery. 



It is possible that many of the termite protozoa take in wood 

 particles from the intestine of their host similarly to Trichonym- 

 pha campanula. Most of them, like T. campanula, have no 

 cytostomes. 



Several suggestions have been made as to the possible methods 

 of food ingestion by these protozoa. Leidy ('81), in his account 

 of termite flagellates, called attention to the presence of food 

 bodies and the lack of any visible channel for their entrance into 

 the body. Kent ('84) claims to have discovered an oral aperture 

 at one side of the body, a short distance from the anterior end. 

 From this opening he traced a narrow oesophagus emptying into 

 a digestive cavity in the posterior region of the body. He studied 

 the organisms in thinly diluted milk, and says that both the 

 pharynx and digestive tract were frequently filled with milk 

 corpuscles. The organism which Kent observed was taken from 

 an unknown termite of Tashmania and belonged, according to 



1 Fellow (in the Biological Sciences) of the National Research Council, working 

 at the Department of Medical Zoology, School of Hygiene and Public Health, 

 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. 



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