Abstract
A thin terminal filament, about 5 µrn in length, was noted by Gray (1955) at the end of the sea urchin sperm flagellum. When examined by electron microscopy, the terminal filament has been found to contain only a subset of the 9+2 complement of microtubules that is characteristic of the sperm axoneme. We describe here new observations on the ultrastructure of the terminal filament, based on a more extensive examination than has been published previously. We have used spermatozoa from the tunicate, Ciona intestinalis and the sea urchin, Lytechinus pictus. These spermatozoa have long flagella and make very planar bending waves, and we have exploited these features to obtain high-resolution photographs showing the bending behavior of the terminal filament and the bending behavior of the 9+2 region of the flagellum in the presence and absence of the terminal filament.
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