Karyological Studies on Land Planarians (Tricladida, Terricola)

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The karyotypes of two land planarians from Madeira have been determined from mitotic metaphase plates from blastema tissue. Kontikia bulbosa (Geoplanidae) possesses a diploid complement of six pairs of chromosomes, all metacentric, and all rather small, that is less than 3 μim in mean length. Microplana terrestris shows mixoploid hyperdiploidy the presumed eudiploid complement comprising three pairs of elements, the largest, ca. 5 (μm, metacentric and the two smaller ones submetacentric. The mosaics exhibit various types of trisomic, tetrasomic and pentasomic aneuploidy. The significance of this variation is not known.