Pl. VIII · Pseudostratifex ciliatus — pseudostratified ciliated columnar

The plate

The specimen, drawn

Pl. VIII

The tissue as you will meet it on the slide.

Habitat & range

Where it lives

Body map

Where this tissue is found.

Range

• Nasal cavity, trachea, bronchiThe large airways that branch from the trachea into the lungs, dividing into smaller bronchioles.
• Auditory tube
• Parts of the male reproductive tract (usually without ciliaHair-like projections on the surface of some cells that move fluids or particles.)

Collection record

• Add your slide numbers here.

Niche

What it does for a living

Sweeping. Goblet cellsThe basic structural and functional units of life. lay down mucus, cilia move it, and the whole escalator carries dust up and out of the airway. Smoke paralyses and then kills the cilia, which is why the mucus stops moving and the cough starts.

field collected specimen

How to know it on sight

• Looks layered; is not.
• Nuclei at several heights, but every cell touches the basement membrane.
• Cilia on top — longer and wavier than a brush borderA dense layer of microvilli on the surface of certain cells, increasing surface area for absorption..
• Goblet cells scattered through the row.

Specimen 1

Specimen 2

Specimen 3

People keep calling her by the wrong name

Look-alikes

Three plates. Read the line underneath each one before you decide.

Stratified columnar

Tell them apart by tracing cells to the membrane. All of them reach it here.

Simple columnar, ciliated

Tell them apart by the nucleiClusters of neurons in the CNS responsible for processing information. — one tidy row — and by the organ: uterine tube, not airway.

Stratified squamous

Tell them apart by the surface: cilia and goblet cells, not flattening dead cells.

Examine it yourself

The virtual slide

Zoom in until you can see the surface of the cells, then find the basement membrane underneath.

Virtual slide courtesy of Histology Guide.

Field notes

Why this animal

A comb jelly moves on eight rows of beating cilia. The colour running along the rows is not pigment — it is light splitting on the combs as they beat.