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Calcarina sp., Foraminifera
Dr. Jennifer Olori - SUNY Oswego
Calcarina sp.
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skull
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Image processing: Dr. Jennifer Olori
Publication Date: 05 Oct 2004

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Foraminifers (commonly called "forams") are the largest members of the group of single-celled microbes known as Protists. These tiny creatures are actually the most diverse group of marine organisms known, with more than 60,000 extinct and extant species recognized today. Foraminifera can be found in oceans worldwide, living either on or buried below the sea floor or as free-floating plankton at the water’s surface. The amoeboid cell of a foram contains a hard, internal shell or test that is divided into chambers. The test can either be excreted by the organism, in which case it will be calcitic or aragonitic in nature, or it can be assembled from a mixture of organic glue and sand or other small particles (agglutinated). Traditionally, species have been classified by the morphology of their tests, with groups characterized by test material and internal chamber arrangement. Most species have porous tests (hence foramina, or windows), from which the cell’s cytoplasm can be extruded in long arms called rhizopodia. These pseudopodia aid both in movement and capturing food such as diatoms and detritus. Interestingly, some large, benthic species are known to harbor symbiotic algae in the chambers of their tests, which provide the extra nutrients needed by these foraminifera in order to grow to such a large size.

calcarina
cutaway

The genus of the specimen shown here, Calcarina, is known for its large test size and its appealing planispiral arrangement of chambers. In the cutaway movies, these chambers easily standout in green, and in life they would have been home to symbiotic algae and cyanobacteria responsible for providing the foram with the nutrients required for its rapid growth. Calcarina, like other large, benthic foraminifera, prefers warm, shallow water associated with reefs and shelves and is found in high numbers in the Indo-Pacific Ocean where it has been used to evaluate the paleoecology of ancient beach sediments.

Other forams on DigiMorph: Cycloclypeus carpenteri

About the Species

This specimen was collected from the Philippines. It was made available to The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Sue Richardson of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce. Funding for scanning was provided by an National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Tim Rowe.

About this Specimen

This specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 13 August 2004 along the coronal axis for a total of 219 1024x1024 pixel slices. Each slice is 0.00443 mm thick, with an interslice spacing of 0.00443 mm and a field of reconstruction of 4 mm.

About the
Scan

Literature

Prothero, Donald R. 2004. Bringing Fossils To Life: An Introduction To Paleobiology: 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math, Boston, 503 pp.

Links

Introduction to Foraminifera (Univ. of California, Berkeley).

Literature
& Links

None available.

Additional
Imagery

To cite this page: Dr. Jennifer Olori, 2004, "Calcarina sp." (On-line), Digital Morphology. Accessed March 29, 2024 at http://digimorph.org/specimens/Calcarina_sp/.

©2002-20019 - UTCT/DigiMorph Funding by NSF
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