A revision of the genus Vorticella (Ciliophorp* Peritrichida) A. Warren Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, London 2 4 APR 1986 Contents Introduction . Systematics Key to species . Species descriptions References Appendix (includes index of extant species and annotated list of nominal species) PRESENTED 1 1 7 11 48 52 Introduction Anyone who has had experience with the identification of free-living ciliates will be familiar with the difficulty of distinguishing the species of Vorticella. Their plastic body shape, variable size and highly contractile nature has made them among the most difficult of ciliates to study and identify. This has resulted in the erection of numerous species and varieties many of which are of doubtful taxonomic status. The last major revision of the genus Vorticella was that of Noland & Finley (1931) who found in the literature over 200 names and descriptions. Many were clearly not congeneric, the majority being either rotifers or other protozoa but even after the rejection of these, some 94 nominal species still remained. Over the intervening 50 years another 113 species and varieties have been added giving a total of 209. With so many taxa, the descriptions of which are spread throughout the literature, the task of the ecologist trying to identify individual isolates has become particu-larly onerous even with the aid of identification keys such as those of Stokes (18850), Kahl (1935), Curds (1969), Stiller (1971) and Green (1974). The aim of this paper is to provide both the ecologist and the specialist in peritrichs, with a functional classification of the species of Vorticella. For this purpose Noland & Finley (1931) have been imitated in that a checklist of the 209 named taxa has been compiled and the taxo-nomic status of each determined. Drawings and descriptions of the extant species of Vorticella are given and a key to their identification has been constructed. Systematics In the scheme adopted by the Committee on Systematics and Evolution of the Society of Protozoologists (Levine et al, 1980), based on the classification of Corliss (1979), the taxonomic position of the genus Vorticella is given as follows: Subkingdom: Protozoa Goldfuss, 1818 emend, von Siebold, 1845 Phylum: Ciliophora Doflein, 1901 Class: Oligohymenophora de Puy torac et al. , 1 974 Subclass: Peritrichia Stein, 1859 Order: Peritrichida Stein, 1859 Suborder: Sessilina Kahl, 1933 Family Vorticellidae Ehrenberg, 1838 Genus: Vorticella Linnaeus, 1 767 Bull. Br. Mus. not. Hist. (Zool.) 50(1): 1-57 Issued 24 April 1986
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