[4] In 1755, German miniature painter August Johann Rösel described Vorticella, which was named Hydra convallaria by Linnaeus in 1758.

[6] Vorticella has been found as an epibiont (attached to the surface of a living substratum when in its sessile stage) of crustaceans, the basibiont.

Zoochlorellae, food reserves and waste granules, which are abundant in the cytoplasm, may create the impression that Vorticella is an opaque cell.

Harmless or parasitic bacteria may grow on the body or stalk, appearing as part of the morphology of the cell.

The two genera differ in their infraciliature, which can be made visible with silver staining: Pseudovorticella has a mesh-like pattern on the surface of the cell.

[10] During its motile form, the free-swimming telotroch appears as a long cylinder, moving quickly and erratically.

Stalk precursors are held in dense granules at the aboral or basal end of the telotroch, which are released as a liquid by exocytosis.

[2] The stalk is made up of the spasmoneme, a contractile organelle, with rigid rod filaments, batonnets, surrounding it.

There are oral cilia specialized for making water currents, cytostomes in a depression on the cell surface and structures for scraping and filtering food.

A fossil Vorticella has been discovered inside a leech cocoon dating to the Triassic period, ca.

[11] The growth, development and emergence of mosquito larvae are inhibited by Vorticella, resulting in death.

The biopolymer glue used for attachment to surfaces may damage sensory systems or pore formation of larvae.

Vorticella has for this reason, been explored as a method of biocontrol for mosquitoes, which are vectors of pathogenic, tropical diseases.

[12] Molecular phylogenetics shows that some species that were previously considered to be Vorticella because of their morphology actually belong to another group, forming a clade with the swimming peritrichs Astylozoon and Opisthonecta.