Euglypha bryophila  Brown, 1911

Diagnosis: (Original description) The shell is very regular in form and subject to no marked variation. It is compressed and in broad view elongated oval, with rounded dome, and lateral margins gradually narrowing with even curvature to the borders of the mouth. In narrow view the dome is somewhat pointed and the lateral margins run in almost straight lines to the mouth. The outline is very even, and may compare with that of E. laevis, Perty. The mouth is almost circular and bordered by six plates, each having one blunt rounded central tooth, with a minute lateral tooth on each side, often very difficult to distinguish. The plates of the test are distinctly marked, are elliptical in shape, and arranged as in E. alveolata, but with some slight irregularity towards the mouth. The crown of the test carries a cluster of four or five long, sharp, curved spines, of a nature similar to those found in E. cristata, Leidy. The protoplasm is quite normal.

Dimensions: Brown (1911): Shell length 50 µm; width 23—25 µm; thickness 16—17 µm; aperture 9 µm; spines about 16 or more.

Habitat: Soil, mosses (hence the name), cosmopolitan. Originally described from “drier mosses of woods.

Distribution. Cosmopolitan. Originally described from districts as widely separated as Monsall Dale (Derbyshire), Port Patrick (Wigtownshire), Glen App (Ayrshire), and Kincardine O’Neil (Aberdeenshire) (Brown, 1911).

Remarks: Brown (1911): “I was at first inclined to regard this as a variety of E. cristata, Leidy, owing to the presence of the cluster of spines, but this is the only respect in which the two forms are similar. E. cristata is quite peculiar amongst Euglypha in being very slenderly built and having a distinctly tube-like uncompressed form, with a very characteristic arrangement and appearance of the plates of the test. In none of these characters does the present species resemble it. Further, it is very unlikely that a variety of a species normal to sphagnum, which occurs in dry moss, would be of more robust build. Dr. Penard, in ‘Mem. Soc. Phys. & Hist. Nat. Geneve,’ 1890, pl. 9. fig. 91 and 92, figures two individuals as broad forms of E. cristata which might be identified with E. bryophila, but he makes no reference to this form in his later works.”