noun
definition
A fertilized female zygote, having thick chitinous walls, that develops from a fertilized oosphere in some algae and fungi
Examples of oospore in a Sentence
After fertilization the female cell, now called the oospore, divides and part of it develops into the embryo (new sporophyte), which remains dormant for a time still protected by the ovule which has developed to become the seed.
The fertilized egg-cell (oospore) forms a filamentous structure, the proernbryo, from a restricted basal portion of which one or more embryos develop, one only as a rule reaching maturity.
Whether a spore results from the sexual union of two similar gametes (zygospore) or from the fertilization of an egg-cell by the protoplasm of a male organ (oospore); or is developed asexually as a motile (zoospore) or a quiescent body cut off from a hypha (conidium) or developed along its course (oidium or chlamydospore), or in its protoplasm (endospore), are matters of importance which have their uses in the classification and terminology of spores, though in many respects they are largely of academic interest.
This remarkable double fertilization as it has been called, although only recently discovered, has been proved to take place in widely-separated families, and both in Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, and there is every probability that, perhaps with variations, it is the normal process in Angiosperms. After impregnation the fertilized oosphere immediately surrounds itself with a cell-wall and becomes the oospore which by a process of growth forms the embryo of the new plant.
The fusion is now known as fertilization, and the product is an oospore.
The germination of a zygospore or oospore is effected by the rupture of an outer cuticularized exosporium; then the cell may protrude an inner wall, the endosporium, and grow out into the new plant (Vaucheria), or the contents may break up into a first brood of zoospores.
It is held that in Coleochaete a parenchyma results from the division of the oospore, from each cell of which a zoospore arises.
This peculiar product of germination, which intervenes between the oospore and the adult form, is the proembryo.
After fertilization the equivalent of the oospore divides directly to form a group of carpospores.
Even among Bangiaceae the carpospores arise from the fertilized cell by division, while in all other Rhodophyceae the oospore, as it may be called, gives rise to a filamentous structure, varying greatly in its dimensions, epiphytic, and to a large extent parasitic upon the egg-bearing parent plant, and in the end giving rise to carpospores in the terminal cells of certain branches.
There is here obviously a certain parallelism with the case of Bryophyta, where the sporogonium arising from the oospore is epiphytic and partially parasitic upon the female plant, and always culminates in the production of spores.
Not even Riccia, with its rudimentary sporogonium, has so simple a corresponding stage as Bangia, for, while there is some amount of sterile tissue in Riccia, in Bangia the oospore completely divides to form carpospores.
Excluding Bangiaceae, however, from consideration, the Euflorideae present in the product of the development of the oospore like Bryophyta a structure partly sterile and partly fertile.
Among Phaeophyceae it is well known that the oospore of Fucaceae germinates directly into the sexual plant, and there is thus only one generation.
The spores of the Aglaozonia form are known to give rise to sexual plants, and the oospore of Cutleria has been observed to grow into rudimentary Aglaozonia.
Mottier's observation has been confirmed by Lloyd Williams, who has shown, moreover, that the single number occurs in germlings from the tetraspore, and also in the adult stages of all sexual plants, while the double number occurs in germlings from the oospore, and in adult stages of all asexual plants.
Among Chlorophyceae it is often the case that the oospore on germination divides up directly to form a brood of zoospores.
In Sphaeroplea it is only at this stage that zoospores are formed at all; but in most cases, such as Oedogonium, Ulothrix, Coleochaete, similar zoospores are produced again and again upon the thallus, and the product of the oospore may be regarded as merely a first brood of a series.
But it is difficult to apply such a term at all to those cases in which there intervene between the oospore and the next sexual stage a series of generations, the zoospores of which are all precisely similar.