Calothrix (images of British biodiversity)

Kingdom: Eubacteria
Phylum: Cyanobacteria – blue-green algae
Order: Nostocales

British distribution (genus): Evidently widespread, freshwater and marine.
World distribution (genus): Cosmopolitan?

Calothrix trichomes: material in culture, named as C. viguieri

Calothrix is characterised by its tapering trichomes with terminal (and sometimes intercalary) heterocysts [or 'heterocytes']. The lower part of the trichome is usually enclosed in a firm, colourless or yellow-brown sheath (not clearly visible in the cultured material shown here). The genus merges into the closely related genus, Dichothrix, distinguished by usually multiple trichomes within a single sheath and a greater tendency to 'false-branching'.

There are a number of species, some freshwater, others marine, forming thin, mucilaginous films or crusts on rocks and aquatic plants, including seaweeds. Calothrix also occus as a lichen photobiont, when it may become more or less unicellular or form short chains of globose cells rather than forming trichomes.


	Photobiont in the maritime lichen, Lichina confinis. This is either Calothrix or possibly the very closely related genus Dichothrix. Material from maritime rocks, Arbroath, Angus, April 2002.

© A.J. Silverside
e-mail: alan.silverside@uws.ac.uk
Page first hosted at www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/bioref/, October 1998, revised January 2003; transferred to lastdragon.org with minor edits, October 2009, last modified January 2010.
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