Evolution of Archamoebae: morphological and molecular evidence for pelobionts including Rhizomastix, Entamoeba, Iodamoeba, and Endolimax
Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 15, 2026

Discovery of New Intracellular Pathogens by Amoebal Coculture and Amoebal Enrichment Approaches
Published on: October 27, 2013
Eliška Ptáčková1, Alexei Yu Kostygov, Lyudmila V Chistyakova
1Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Vinicna 7, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic.
Abstract:
The archamoebae form a small clade of anaerobic/microaerophilic flagellates or amoebae, comprising the pelobionts (mastigamoebids and pelomyxids) and the entamoebae. It is a member of the eukaryotic supergroup Amoebozoa. We examined 22 strains of 13 species of Mastigamoeba, Pelomyxa and Rhizomastix by light-microscopy and determined their SSU rRNA gene sequences. The SSU rRNA gene sequences of Pelomyxa palustris and Mastigella commutans in GenBank are shown to belong to P. stagnalis and Mastigamoeba punctachora, respectively. Five new species of free-living archamoebae are described: Mastigamoeba abducta, M. errans, M. guttula, M. lenta, and Rhizomastix libera spp. nov. A species of Mastigamoeba possibly living endosymbiotically in Pelomyxa was identified. Rhizomastix libera, the first known free-living member of that genus, is shown to be an archamoeba. R. libera possesses an ultrastructure unique within archamoebae: a rhizostyle formed from a modified microtubular cone and a flagellum with vanes. While many nominal species of pelobionts are extremely hard to distinguish by light microscopy, transient pseudopodial characters are worthy of further investigation as taxonomic markers.
More Related Videos
10:56Complementary Use of Microscopic Techniques and Fluorescence Reading in Studying Cryptococcus-Amoeba Interactions
Published on: June 22, 2019
09:58Preparation of Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Organisms Using Chemical Drying for Morphological Analysis in Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
Published on: January 7, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Diversity of Protists IV
Diversity of Protists III
Eukaryotic Evolution
Contrary to the endosymbiont theory, the eukaryote-first hypothesis proposes that the simpler prokaryotic and...
Diversity of Protists I
Diversity of Archaea II
Surface Appendages of Archaea