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Wiktionary
euglena

n. (context biology English) Any of several protists, of the genus (taxlink Euglena genus noshow=1), that contain chloroplasts and a single flagellum

WordNet
euglena

n. minute single-celled green freshwater organism having a single flagella; often classed as algae

Wikipedia
Euglena

''' Euglena is a genus of single-celled flagellate Eukaryotes. It is the best known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a diverse group containing some 54 genera and at least 800 species. Species of Euglena are found in fresh and salt waters. They are often abundant in quiet inland waters where they may bloom in numbers sufficient to color the surface of ponds and ditches green (E. viridis) or red ( E. sanguinea).

The species Euglena gracilis has been used extensively in the laboratory as a model organism.

Most species of Euglena have photosynthesizing chloroplasts within the body of the cell, which enable them to feed by autotrophy, like plants. However, they can also take nourishment heterotrophically, like animals. Since Euglena have features of both animals and plants, early taxonomists, working within the Linnaean three-kingdom system of biological classification, found them difficult to classify. It was the question of where to put such "unclassifiable" creatures that prompted Ernst Haeckel to add a third kingdom to the Animale and Vegetabile of Linnaeus: the Kingdom Protista.

Usage examples of "euglena".

There was at last only one single Euglena, half-plant cousin of the protos, forging along beside the spaceship into the marches of the shallows.

And above the icy jungle of the ground level there grew—in successive, increasingly airy stories—skeletal, weblike structures: cocoons, nests, club moss, euglenas, gills pulled from the bodies of fish but still pulsing, because everything, in a constant drizzle, crept and coiled.