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Name derivation:

"Ball of bolts", from the Greek gomphos, a bolt, a club, and sphaira, a ball.

Morphology:

Spherical colonies of club-shaped cells, or heart-shapedwhen dividing, that are joined in the middle of the colony by a system of mucilaginous stalks that widen at the periphery of the colony to enclose individual cells.The colonies are within a mucilaginous envelope.

Similar genera:

Could be confused with the green algae Dictyosphaerium and Dimorphococcus, however those genera lack the mucilaginous envelope.

Habitat:

Planktonic in lakes . The speciesG. aponina produces a substance termed aponin, and when grown in mixed culture with the red tide dinoflagellate Gymnodinium breve, appeared to be responsible for its lysis (McCoy and Martin 1977)

References:
McCoy L. F. Jr. and D. F. Martin. 1977. The influence of Gomphosphaeria aponina on the growth of Gymnodinium breve and the effect of aponin on the ichthyotoxicity of Gymnodinium breve. Chemico-biological interactions 17(1): 17-24