The health of freshwater and marine ecosystems is critical to life on Earth. The impact of
solar UV-B radiation is one potential stress factor that can have a negative impact on the …

Mixotrophy is the occurrence of phagotrophy and phototrophy in the same organism. In
ciliates the intracellular phototroph can be unicellular green algae (zoochlorellae) …

An ancestral eukaryote acquired photosynthesis by genetically integrating a cyanobacterial
endosymbiont as the chloroplast. The chloroplast was then further integrated into many …

Abstract Background The ciliate Paramecium bursaria harbors several hundred cells of the
green-alga Chlorella sp. in their cytoplasm. Irrespective of the mutual relation between P …

Mutual interactions in the form of symbioses can increase the fitness of organisms and
provide them with the capacity to occupy new ecological niches. The formation of obligate …

Evolutionary theory suggests that the conditions required for the establishment of mutualistic
symbioses through mutualism alone are highly restrictive, often requiring the evolution of …

We report a summary of the symposium “Stress and Protists: No life without stress”, which
was held in September 2015 on the VII European Congress of Protistology in partnership …

Paramecium bursaria is a mixotrophic ciliate species, which is common in stagnant and slow-
flowing, nutrient-rich waters. It is usually found living in symbiosis with zoochlorellae (green …

Algal endosymbiosis is widely present among eukaryotes including many protists and
metazoans. However, the mechanisms involved in their interactions between host and …

Endosymbiosis, an interaction between two species where one lives within the other, has
evolved multiple times independently, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear …