MONER (from Neo-Lat. nioneron, from Gk. iLoinjpys, mont'res, solitary, from p6vos, monos, single apapitqce,v, ararinkein, to join). The simplest form of Protozoa, and the nearest to what may have been the most primitive living being. The Monera of llaeckel differ from the rhizopods (Ameba, etc.) in wanting a nucleus and contractile vesicles. Their body-substance is homogeneous throughout, not divided into a tenacious outer and soft inner mass, as in Ameba. They move by the contraction of the body and the irregular protrusion of portions of the body, forming either simple processes (pseudopodia) or a network of gelatinous threads. The food, as some diatom, desmid, or protozoan, is swallowed whole, being surrounded and engulfed by the body, and the protoplasmic matter then absorbed. The simplest form known, and supposed to be really a living being, is Hacekel's Protanneba.
It is like an ameba, but is not known to have a nucleus and vacuoles. It reproduces by sim ple self-division, much as in Ameba. The individual moner—for example, Protanneba—bi simply a speck or drop of transparent, often col orless. viseid fluid. This drop of protoplasm has the power of absorbing the protoplasm of other living beings, and thus of increasing in size—i.e. growing; and in taking its food makes various movements, one or more parts of its body being more movable than others, the faculty of motion thus being for the moment specialized; it has apparently the power of selecting one kind of food in preference to another, and, finally, of reproducing its kind by a process not only of simple self-division, but also of germ-prodnetion. Consult: Haeekel. History of Creation (New York, 1876). See PROTISTA.