Life Cycle: "The life cycles of the Entamoeba genus are variable, but many use a fecal-oral life cycle. For example, E. histolytica, pathogenic to humans, uses a fecal-oral life cycles where infective cysts are passed in the feces and contaminate food sources and water to infect the next host" (Wiser, 2010).
Description:
Size usually small (from 10 to 50 microns); ectoplasm more or less well defined; endoplasm clear, or finely granular, or with large granules of volutin, or with chromidia. Contractile vacuoles usually absent. Nuclei vesicular with or without definite karyosomes. Nuclear division mesomitotic or mitotic. Reproduction by simple division, by buddings, or by spore formulation.
Source: Transactions of the Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, Washington, September 23-28, 1912, Vol. 2, p. 300.
Wiser, M.F. 2010. Protozoa and Human Disease. First edition. Chapter 3. Garland Science. New York, New York. p. 31-46.
