The plagiopylids are a small order of
ciliates, including a few forms common in anaerobic habitats.
The body cilia are dense, and arise from
monokinetids with an entirely unique ultrastructure; one or two rows of
dikinetids run into the oral cavity, which takes the form of a groove, with a deep tube lined by oral cilia leading to the mouth. The order was introduced by Eugen Small and Denis Lynn in 1985, who treated it as a subclass of
Oligohymenophorea. Since then they tend to be treated as an independent class, possibly affiliated with the
Colpodea. Class Plagiopylea is divided into two clades:[2] one contains members of the order Plagiopylida (like Plagiopyla frontata and Trimyema compressum) and the second clade contains plagiopylean
ciliate associated with
denitrifying obligate
endosymbiontCandidatus Azoamicus ciliaticola.[3]
References
^Lynn DH (2008-06-24). The Ciliated Protozoa: Characterization, Classification, and Guide to the Literature (3rd ed.). Springer. p. 409.
ISBN978-1-4020-8239-9.
Xu Y, Shao C, Miao M, Song W (January 2013). "Redescription of Parasonderia vestita (Kahl, 1928) comb. nov. (Ciliophora, Plagiopylida), with notes on its phylogeny based on SSU rRNA gene". European Journal of Protistology. 49 (1): 106–13.
doi:
10.1016/j.ejop.2012.03.001.
PMID22771178.