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Although protist flagella have a diversity of forms and functions, [11] two large families, flagellates and ciliates, can be distinguished by the shape and beating pattern of their flagella. [ 2 ] In the phylogenetic tree on the right, aquatic organisms (living in marine, brackish, or freshwater environments) have their branches drawn in blue ...
A protist (/ ˈ p r oʊ t ɪ s t / PROH-tist) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, land plant, or fungus.Protists do not form a natural group, or clade, but are a polyphyletic grouping of several independent clades that evolved from the last eukaryotic common ancestor.
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 .
A mixotroph is an organism that uses a mix of different sources of energy and carbon, instead of having a single trophic mode, on the continuum from complete autotrophy to complete heterotrophy. It is estimated that mixotrophs comprise more than half of all microscopic plankton. [1] There are two types of eukaryotic mixotrophs.
Originally the heliozoa were treated together as a formal taxon Heliozoa or Heliozoea, with the rank of class or phylum, but it has been realised that they are polyphyletic, as the various orders show notable differences and are no longer believed to be descended from a single common ancestor.
The best-understood contractile vacuoles belong to the protists Paramecium, Amoeba, Dictyostelium and Trypanosoma, and to a lesser extent the green alga Chlamydomonas. Not all species that possess a contractile vacuole are freshwater organisms ; some marine , soil microorganisms and parasites also have a contractile vacuole.
Dinoflagellates are protists and have been classified using both the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN, now renamed as ICN) and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). About half of living dinoflagellate species are autotrophs possessing chloroplasts and half are nonphotosynthesising heterotrophs.