noun
definition
An organ producing male gametes called antherozoids, found in some algae, ferns, and bryophytes.
Examples of antheridium in a Sentence
The sexual reproduction shows all transitions between forms which are normally sexual, like the Peronosporaceae, to forms in which no antheridium is developed and the oospheres develop parthenogenetically.
The contents of the antheridium are not set free, but that organ penetrates the oogonium by means of a narrow outgrowth, the fertilizing tube, and a male nucleus then passes over into the single oosphere, which at first multinucleate becomes uninucleate before fertilization.
In Cystopus Bliti the oosphere contains numerous nuclei, and all the male nuclei from the antheridium pass into it, the male and female nuclei then fusing in pairs.
Young tube (a) of the antheridium multinucleate oogonium (og) which introduces the male and antheridium (an).
In some forms we find definite male and female sexual organs (Sphaerotheca, Pyronema, &c.), in others the antheridium is abortive or absent, but the ascogonium (oogonium) is still present and the female nuclei fuse in pairs (Lachnea stercorea, Humaria granulata, Ascobolus furfuraceus); while in other forms ascogonium and antheridium are both absent and fusion occurs between vegetative nuclei (Humaria rutilans, and probably the majority of other forms).
When the ascogonium (female organ) is present the ascogenous hyphae arise from it, with or without its previous fusion with an antheridium.
The latter arise from the crown of a spirally coiled archicarp (bearing an ascogonium at its end) and a straight antheridium.
Functional male and female organs have been shown to exist in Pyronema and Boudiera; in Lachnea stercorea both ascogonia and antheridia a are present, but the antheridium a1 is non-functional, the ascogonial _s- - (fema l e) nuclei fusing in pairs; /'y' this is also the case' in Humaria /;' h; granulate and Ascobolus furfurs -./ '"aceus, where the antheridium is _ / /, - entirely absent.
The male organ (antheridium) consists of a few cells, the terminal one of which either abstricts from its end, or emits from its interior the non-motile spermatia, reminding us of those of the Florideae.
In such a case the zoogamete is male, is called an antherozoid or spermatozoid, and arises in an antheridium; the larger gamete is an oosphere and arises in an oogonium.
Fertilization is effected by the passive convection of a spermatium from the antheridium to the trichogyne, to which it adheres, and to which it passes over its nucleus through an open communication set up at the point of contact.
In the light of our present knowledge of Ginkgo and the Cycads, there can scarcely be a doubt that spermatozoids were formed in the cells of the antheridium of the Cordaitean pollen-grain and that of other Palaeozoic Spermophyta; the an theridium is much more developed than in any recent Gymnosperm, and it may be doubted whether any pollen-tube was formed.