Flask-shaped radiolarians - Scientific art print - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Bottle-shaped radiolarians

Original title Cyrtoidea - Flaschenstrahlinge

Poster of Calocyclas - Protozoa of the class Tunicates (Section Thaliacea, Order Medusae)

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This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!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 Rhizopoda (Rhizopoda)
Class Radiolaria (Radiolaria)
Nacellaria Legion or Monopyleen (Nassellaria)
Order of the bottle-shaped Radiolaria (Cyrtoidea)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Cyrtoidea - Bottle-shaped Radiolaria :

The figures in this plate represent the siliceous skeletons of the Cyrtoidea, the richest order in forms of the Nassellarian legion; 160 genera and more than 1200 different species are already known from this order, most of them very small, invisible to the naked eye or appearing only as a point. The Cyrtoidea are closely related to the Spyroidea, shown in Plate 22. The living soft body, which lies inside the siliceous shell (illustrated in Plate 11), is a simple rounded cell (ovoid, conical, or oblong); the numerous fine plasma filaments, which radiate everywhere from the internal central capsule, are shown here only in Fig. 7; they construct the delicate siliceous shell, which is distinguished in this order by an extraordinary variety and elegance in shell form and lattice formation. Rarely does the shell remain unicellular (Monocyrtida, Fig. 1); Most often, one or two chambers are added to the first chamber (Bicellular, Dicyrtida, Fig. 2, 3; — Tricellular, Tricyrtida, Fig. 4-8). Then, the first chamber (at the top) is designated as the head (Cephalis), the second as the thorax (Thorax), the third as the abdomen (Abdomen). In multicellular (Polycyrtida), 4-8 or more (sometimes 10-20) chambers are superimposed (Fig. 9, 11). Most often, the lattice shell is decorated with delicate appendages that serve as defensive weapons and flotation devices (horns on the head, wings on the thorax, feet on the abdomen).

Species present on the naturalist plate of Bottle-shaped Radiolaria - Calocyclas :

• Cyrtophormis spiralis
• Clathrocanium reginae
• Anthocyrtium campanula
• Pterocorys rhinoceros
• Lithornithium falco
• Alacorys bismarckii
• Calocyclas monumentum
• Pterocanium trilobum
• Stichophaena ritteriana
• Dictyocodon annasethe
• Artopilium elegans