Warnowiceae is a family of dinoflagellates, which are a diverse group of single celled, eukaryotic organisms. Members of this family are called warnowiids, which are rare, free swimming protozoa living among marine plankton (microscopic, floating organisms that live in large bodies of water). Warnowiids are most known for the ocelloid that each one has. An ocelloid is a subcellular structure that is found in these organisms and is very similar to any given eye of humans and other animals.
Warnowiids have been gathered off of the coast of British Columbia in Canada and Japan. Like I said before, warnowiids generally live among marine plankton. However, while plankton can’t swim without currents, warnowiids can. Warnowiids are very rare in…show more content… The family Warnowiceae contains eight known genera. Descriptions of these and the different species of warnowiids are very complicated due to complex changes during the life cycle and in response to the environment. The evolution and systematics of this group is not very clear. According to phys.org, warnowiids “can evolve similar traits in response to their environments, a process known as convergent evolution.” A senior author of a paper written from a study done by the University of British Columbia, Brian Leander, says this: "When we see such similar structural complexity at fundamentally different levels of organization in lineages that are very distantly related, then you get a much deeper understanding of convergence.”
The most prominent feature of a warnowiid is its ocelloid. This is a very complex structure that is made up of multiple organelles in very specific arrangements- so much so that it is very similar in structure to a human eye- including a lens, cornea, and retina. This structure has fascinated evolutionists all the way back to Darwin. He writes that the idea of the ‘eye’ forming by natural selection seemed “absurd in…show more content… Many warnowiids use harpoon-like structures called nematocysts to spear and capture their prey. Some think that the ocelloid is used to aim the harpoons at their prey, but this doesn’t seem likely as with only one ocelloid, the already miniscule cell wouldn’t have a very good view of their world. “There were only so many things that it could do with such limiting processing power,” Greg Gavelis says. “Even resolving an outline or a shadow is way beyond what anyone has demonstrated that a cell can do.” Gavelis has also dismissed the idea that the ocelloid is used to detect levels of light to help the organism move towards or away from light. This is because other single-celled organisms have much simpler structures that allow them to do that very thing. Much of the warnowiids’ prey consists of transparent dinoflagellates, and these creatures reflect a certain type of light, which Gavelis suspects that the ocelloids could detect. The warnowiid would then swim towards the creature that the it found. Tom Cronin, a scientist from the University of Maryland, disagrees, and calls this idea a “monstrous stretch.” He thinks that intricate structures don’t necessarily mean complex behavior. He states how other dinoflagellates capture their food without the ocelloid. Finally, he wonders if the ocelloid is really an “eye” at all, or if it is just a “glorified chloroplast.” Maybe the ocelloid’s function is just to
