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The species diversity of protists is severely underestimated by traditional methods that differentiate species based on morphological characteristics. The number of described protist species is very low (ranging from 26,000 [ 35 ] to over 76,000) [ c ] in comparison to the diversity of plants, animals and fungi, which are historically and ...
Protists are distributed across all major groups of eukaryotes, including those that contain multicellular algae, green plants, animals, and fungi. If photosynthetic and fungal protists are distinguished from protozoa, they appear as shown in the phylogenetic tree of eukaryotic groups.
A protist (/ ˈ p r oʊ t ɪ s t /) is any eukaryotic organism (one with cells containing a nucleus) that is not an animal, plant, or fungus.The protists do not form a natural group, or clade, since they exclude certain eukaryotes with whom they share a common ancestor; [a] but, like algae or invertebrates, the grouping is used for convenience.
Protistology is a scientific discipline devoted to the study of protists, a highly diverse group of eukaryotic organisms. All eukaryotes apart from animals, plants and fungi are considered protists. [1]
Marine protists are defined by their habitat as protists that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Life originated as marine single-celled prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes .
The alveolates (meaning "pitted like a honeycomb") [2] are a group of protists, considered a major clade [3] and superphylum [4] within Eukarya. They are currently grouped with the stramenopiles and Rhizaria among the protists with tubulocristate mitochondria into the SAR supergroup .
Ciliates are an important group of protists, common almost anywhere there is water—in lakes, ponds, oceans, rivers, and soils, including anoxic and oxygen-depleted habitats. [2] About 4,500 unique free-living species have been described, and the potential number of extant species is estimated at 27,000–40,000. [3]
Amoebozoa is a major taxonomic group containing about 2,400 described species of amoeboid protists, [8] often possessing blunt, fingerlike, lobose pseudopods and tubular mitochondrial cristae. [7] [9] In traditional classification schemes, Amoebozoa is usually ranked as a phylum within either the kingdom Protista [10] or the kingdom Protozoa.