Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Micropaleontology 138 (2018): 46-62, doi:10.1016/j.marmicro.2017.10.003.
Description:
Assimilation, sequestration and maintenance of foreign chloroplasts inside an organism is termed
“chloroplast sequestration” or “kleptoplasty”. This phenomenon is known in certain benthic
foraminifera, in which such kleptoplasts can be found both intact and functional, but with different
retention times depending on foraminiferal species. In the present study, seven species of benthic
foraminifera (Haynesina germanica, Elphidium williamsoni, E. selseyense, E. oceanense, E. aff. E.
crispum, Planoglabratella opercularis and Ammonia sp.) were collected from shallow-water benthic
habitats and examined with transmission electron microscope (TEM) for cellular ultrastructure to
ascertain attributes of kleptoplasts. Results indicate that all these foraminiferal taxa actively obtain
kleptoplasts but organized them differently within their endoplasm. In some species, the kleptoplasts
were evenly distributed throughout the endoplasm (e.g., H. germanica, E. oceanense, Ammonia sp.),
whereas other species consistently had plastids distributed close to the external cell membrane (e.g.,
Elphidium williamsoni, E. selseyense, P. opercularis). Chloroplast degradation also seemed to differ
between species, as many degraded plastids were found in Ammonia sp. and E. oceanense compared to
other investigated species. Digestion ability, along with different feeding and sequestration strategies
may explain the differences in retention time between taxa. Additionally, the organization of the
sequestered plastids within the endoplasm may also suggest behavioral strategies to expose and/or
protect the sequestered plastids to/from light and/or to favor gas and/or nutrient exchange with their
surrounding habitats.
Description:
TJ was funded by the “FRESCO” project, a project supported by the Region Pays de Loire
and the University of Angers. This work was also supported by a grant no. 200021_149333 from the
Swiss National Science Foundation and the French national program EC2CO-LEFE (project
ForChlo).JMB acknowledges the Robert W. Morse Chair for Excellence in Oceanography and the
Investment in Science Fund at WHOI. Also, KK acknowledges the Academy of Finland (Project numbers: 278827, 283453).
Keywords:
Kleptoplasty
;
Protist
;
Chloroplast
;
TEM
;
Transmission electron microscope
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
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