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SEM of coccosphere. Flagellar opening is toward top right. Note considerable variation in coccolith size and wing development
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A coccolithophorid from the Ionean Sea. Coccolithophorids are plants and cover their cells with calcium carbonate plates. Lugol's-fixed specimen, DIC optics. In the gallery of Tintinnids, genus Codonellopsis, see a species that uses some of the coccoliths to cover its own shell.
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Broken coccolith of H. wallichii in distal view, breakage shows the proximal shield.
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Helicosphaera wallichii (Lohmann 1902) Okada & McIntyre 1977 [Coccolithophora] Like H. carteri but: central-area with oblique twisted slits; bridge typically better developed; and liths perhaps slightly larger. NB Slits obliquity: In distal view the slits are rotated about 10-20° clockwise (and so away from the wing), this is the ânormalâ sense of obliquity in Helicosphaera, as shown by many fossil species. The Pleistocene species H. inversa is similar but shows the opposite sense of obliquity. HOL phase - unknown but H. wallichii often co-occurs with Syracolithus dalmaticus in our samples (Geisen et al., 2004).