In this essay, I will discus protists as the first eukaryotic organisms, the parameters used to classify protists, including feeding, reproduction and their unique features. The kingdom Protista is an artificial grouping, defined only by what members of this group are not: protists are neither plants nor animals nor fungi, nor are they bacteria or archaeans (Cain, 2012, p. 55). Biologists today, still agree that protista is an artificial kingdom, composed of groups with very different evolutionary histories. Several classifications have been developed, split, and assigned to different members, such as, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia. Protista is a category of eukaryotic organisms that have not been formally assigned to other kingdoms or to separate kingdoms of their own (Cain, 2012, p. 55). It is not clear how, protists fall into play in the evolutionary relationship to one another and to other living organisms. As a result, there are a several competing hypotheses, and for that reason, there are different evolutionary trees, postulating the relationships of the protists. The tree is based on many different lines of evidence, including comparisons of cell structure, metabolic chemistry, and DNA code; and it makes clear that protists do not constitute just one distinct branch on the tree of life (Cain, 2012, p. 56). The presence of plants, animals, and fungi on various branches of the evolutionary tree shows that protista is not a natural grouping; that is,
All humans have come into contact with some form of fungi at some point in their lives. Sometimes fungi produce large mushroom like structures, or sometimes they just appear as small wisps of hair. But with so many different forms and variations of fungi, sometimes they become hard to classify, and there is confusion as to whether it maybe a plant or bacteria. Buckholz et al (2016) state that the fungal kingdom deserves to be neither a prokaryote not a plant. Fungi are eukaryotic organisms that contain a membrane bound nucleus. They are also heterotrophic and consume their carbon. The main difference between animals and fungi is that fungi perform their digestion externally (Buckholz et al. 2016). This leads to the importance of fungi: decomposing. Fungi maintain crucial processes in terrestrial ecosystems as decomposers of dead plant tissues and mutualistic partners of almost all terrestrial multicellular organisms (Heilmann-Clausen et al. 2015). Without fungi,
The distinction was made from Prokaryotes Bacteria and Archaea which are classified different to the domain of the Eukaryotes and there four kingdoms (animals, plants, protists and fungi). The Prokaryotes meaning comes for the Greek word meaning (pro) “before” and (karyon) meaning “nut or kernel” Most of the prokaryotes can be seen as a unicellular organisms although the myxobacteria have been seen in different stages in their life cycles like in colonies of cyanobacteria. (Also call blue green algae) Which are predominantly photosynthetic and also fall into prokaryotes Eubacteria kingdom. Although you can find some Algae as Eukaryotes domain. Like most algae’s that are photosynthetic can produce oxygen gas as a by-product. Theorists have proposed that this could have been the link to change the early atmosphere on earth into and oxidizing one that enabled the stimulation of the biodiversity of life that we see today.
The all animals are classified under the Kingdom Animalia, also known as Metazoa. This kingdom does not contain prokaryotes. All the members of this kingdom are multicellular, eukaryotes. They are heterotrophs, they depend on other organisms directly or indirectly for food. Most of the animals ingest food and digest in the internal cavity. Most of the organisms are motile which means they can move independently and spontaneously.
Prokaryotes were defined in 1962 by Stanier and van Niel as “anucleate cells, without membrane enclosed organelles of respiration or photosynthesis, divided by fission not mitosis, and used peptidoglycan to strengthen their walls” (Mayr, 1998). This definition and the creation of the prokaryote/eukaryote dichotomy served to highlight the diversity and significance of the single-celled organisms previously labelled ‘Monera’ and relegated to the same kingdom status as the distinct groups of plants animals and fungi (Sapp, 2009; Woese, Kandler and
Edouard Chatton (cities in Soyer- Gobillard, 2006) in 1925, was first to divide cells into either prokaryotes or eukaryotes. Eukaryotic cells are typically larger and include protists, plants, fungi and animal cells. They are described as ‘a type of cell with membrane-enclosed organelles and membrane-enclosed nucleus’ (Cain et al, 2014, p171). A typically smaller prokaryotic cell ‘lacks a membrane-enclosed nucleus and membrane-enclosed organelles’; this term includes the domains of bacteria and Archaea (Cain et al, 2014, p171).
By the end of the 20th century, Thomas Cavalier-Smith, after a long and intense study of protists, he created a new system with 6 kingdoms. Bacteria and Archaea were combined so they were in the same in the same kingdom, called Bacteria. Protists were divided in two kingdoms, (1) Chromista, including Alveolates (parasitic protozoa), brown algae, water moulds, golden algae, etc, among others. and (2) Protozoa, including amoebas, slime moulds, and a set of protozoa called Excavata. Red and green algae were shifted to inside the kingdom Plantae.
In order to conduct this experiment, three types of evolutionary trees are built in order to compare similarities and differences between the organisms. The first tree is an organization of the 11 organisms given. The http://www.boldsystems.org/ website is used because it provides the organisms’ phylum, class and order. The 11 organisms from the fungi kingdom are in the ascomycota, basidiomycota, zygomycota and chytridiomycota(outgroup) taxonomic groups. To create the classical tree, compile information about the differences and similarities between organisms, create a data matrix, use the data matrix to record the number of differences and find the closest relatives based off which have the fewest differences. Fungi with one difference are
Protista are a eukaryotic organism, which means that it has a nucleus. Protists are so unique because they have enough of 100,000 and are so diverse in their structure and behavior, that originally some scientist actually considered some of them were plants, animals, fungi, and some actually a combination. But scientist later on described protista to serve as those organisms that are eukaryotes, not plants, animals, or fungi. Despite the fact that most are unicellular, a bit of them are multicellular.
The principal branches of the tree of life are Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. These three branches distinct and are very much alike to each other. Bacteria and Archaea are comparable in size, shape, generative procedure and amount of chromosomes. Both recreate using binary fission and they only have one chromosome. Bacteria and Archaea both lack a nucleus and other organelles. Eukarya have diversified chromosomes and a nucleus. Archaean cells have dissimilar lipid bonds than both Bacteria and Eukarya. In addition to both Bacteria and Eukarya have greasy acids in their cells but, Archeans do not. Nevertheless all of them have RNA, even though Archaea have more complex RNA polymerases than Bacteria. All three branches on the Tree of Life are
The term ‘prokaryote’ was coined in 1925 by Édouard Chatton in his 1925 paper ‘Pansporella perplex: Reflections on the Biology and Phylogeny of the Protozoa.’ (Chatton, 1925). Since then the term, when paired with its dichotomous counterpart ‘eukaryote’, has formed the fundamental basis for classification in biology. However in recent years the concept of the prokaryote has been wildly contested as being inaccurate (amongst other things), and the dichotomy of eukaryote/prokaryote based on a misleading and ultimately incorrect distinction that is phylogenetically contestable. This essay will examine the validity and usefulness of the concept of the prokaryote, as well as evaluate why the term or even the abolition of the term may be important in different contexts.
Once they were only two kingdoms: Plants and Animals. In the late 1960s biologists recognized five kingdoms: Protisto (kingdom consisting mostly of unicellular organisms), Plantae, Fungi, Animalia, Monera (Prokaryotes). This system highlighted the two fundamentally different types of cells prokaryotic and eukaryotic and set the prokaryotes apart from all eukaryotes by placing them in their own kingdom. However, it appears that phylogenies based on genetic data found out that some prokaryotes
Coexistence has been happening among many species since the beginning of time throughout nature. The way species exist is of great complexity as many factors such as: competition and predation play an important role (Chase et al. 2002; Holt 1984; Paine 1966). Ecosystems, communities and populations all face competition between their species. Studies are constantly being done to show how different species survive together or die trying and what is it that they are fighting to survive over. Different habitats, predator, prey, and so many other factors play a role in the survival of species like protists. Many laboratory studies have been done on two protists, Paramecium aurelia and Paramecium caudatum, to see different aspects of their
There are multiple interpretations concerning how phylogenetic trees are built and the understanding of the phylogenetic species concept. A common mistake when it comes to interpreting phylogenetic trees, which portray evolutionary relationships among taxa. Generally it is viewed as a “ladder of progress,” yet it is not so simple and is often the most relevant error to occur among reports. Species delimitation additionally plays a similar role in this article, in that it is misused when providing evidence of species being divided; however, it is much harder to understand the varying outlooks. Overall, the article focused on these mistakes un order to provide practical guidelines for phylogenetic and taxonomic papers.
Essay topic: Symbioses between Prokaryotic cells that happened approximately 2 billion years ago are thought to be at the origin of Eukaryotes. But mutually dependent symbioses continue to be established at the cellular and organism levels. Read the section on the origin of Eukaryotes in the unit’s prescribed textbook and use the reference below to research and describe the importance of symbioses in the origin and evolution of cells and organisms with novel capabilities.
Taxonomy is the science of grouping organisms into multiple arrangements based on their characteristics. Carl Linnaeus is thought to be the father of taxonomy, however, unlike Aristotle, he was able to group organisms further starting with “Kingdoms”, which was then grouped again into