Flagellates - Natural history artistic poster - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Reproduction engraving of: Flagellates

Original title Flagellata - Geißlinge

Poster of Dinobryon - Protozoa of the main class Infusoria (Class Flagellates)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum Protozoa
Main class of Infusoria
Class of Flagellates (Flagellata)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Flagellata - Flagellates :

The body of flagellates or flagellated infusoria (Flagellata) consists of a simple cell which bears one or more flagella on some part of its body; these beat like whips and serve the free-swimming forms, and the attached forms create a swirling motion in the water, allowing the supply of food and oxygen to the body. Many flagellates live as isolated individual cells (Figs. 4, 5), both in seawater and freshwater; some also live as commensals inside other organisms. Many other flagellates form small colonies or coenobia; the cells which live thus united are sometimes found free in groups at the ends of branching stalks (Fig. 13), sometimes they inhabit tubes or cup-shaped envelopes into which they can retract (Figs. 6—10).

Species present on the naturalist plate of Flagellates - Dinobryon :

• Anthophysa vegetans
• Cephalothamnium cyclopum
• Codonocladium candelabrum
• Trichomonas intestinalis
• Tetramitus rostratus
• Rhipidodoendron splendidum
• Coconosiga botrytis
• Phalansterium digitatum
• Dinobryon sertularia
• Poteriodendron petiolatum
• Uvella glaucoma