PARASITES OF PROTOZOA 1011 



time on Mastigamoeba aspera, small rods besetting the surface having 

 been described by Schuize (1875) in the original description of this 

 type species of the genus. He stated that these rods could best be com- 

 pared with certain bacteria, such as Bacterium termo. Most of them are 

 applied full length to the body surface. Of other observers, some recog- 

 nized the similarity of the rods to bacteria and others opposed this in- 

 terpretation, but Penard (1905c, 1909) definitely established their bac- 

 terial nature. The bacteria, he found, vary in number, but there are 

 few individuals of the species without them. Lauterborn (1916) stated 

 that a sapropelic flagellate, possibly belonging to the genus Masti- 

 gamoeba, possessed a yellow-green mantle of radially adherent chloro- 

 bacteria, which he named Chlorobacterium symbioticum. 



These are the only free-living flagellates, to the writer's knowledge, 

 on which bacteria have been reported. Many endozoic flagellates bear 

 Schizomycetes. Grasse (1926a, 1926b, and elsewhere) has done much 

 to increase our understanding of those microorganisms, which many 

 earlier observers had mistaken for pellicular differentiations, cilia, or 

 flagella. Duboscq and Grasse (1926, 1927) found short rods adherent 

 by full length on many specimens of "Devescovina" hilli, showed that 

 these are bacteria, and named them Fusiformis bill/; and they also found 

 spirochetes, named Treponema hilli, adherent to all parts of the body 

 surface. The former report of the rods first established the true nature 

 of the "striations," which Foa (1905), Janicki (1915), and Kirby 

 (1926b) had described on Devescovina. 



In many instances the presence of certain micro5rganisms is character- 

 istic of the species, and may indeed be considered, together with its 

 morphological characteristics, as an aid in taxonomy. Simpler phoretic 

 relationships, in which the presence of the adherent forms is only 

 occasional, do, however, exist between micro5rganisms and some flagel- 

 lates. Examples are the rod-like bacteria occasionally adherent, full length, 

 to Hexamastix claviger (Kirby, 1930); the bacteria sometimes present 

 on the larger forms of Tricercomitus termopsidis (Kirby, 1930); the 

 occasional spirals and rods on Eutrichomastix trichopterae, E. colubro- 

 rum, and Octomitus intestinalis (Grasse, 1926b) ; and the lumen-dwelling 

 types of bacteria and spirochetes often adherent sporadically to various 

 termite flagellates. Boeck (1917) stated that rod-shaped bacteria at 

 times, in certain preparations, covered the body and adhered to the 

 flagella of Giardia microti. 



