Chromista

Common card · No. 324623

Chromista is a proposed but controversial biological kingdom, refined from the Chromalveolata, consisting of single-celled and multicellular eukaryotic species that share similar features in their photosynthetic organelles (plastids). It includes all eukaryotes whose plastids contain chlorophyll c and are surrounded by four membranes. If the ancestor already possessed chloroplasts derived by endosymbiosis from red algae, all non-photosynthetic Chromista have secondarily lost the ability to photosynthesise. Its members might have arisen independently as separate evolutionary groups from the last eukaryotic common ancestor. Chromista as a taxon was created by the British biologist Thomas Cavalier-Smith in 1981 to distinguish the stramenopiles, haptophytes, and cryptophytes. According to Cavalier-Smith, the kingdom originally consisted mostly of photosynthetic eukaryotes (algae), but he later brought many heterotrophs (protozoa) into the proposed group. As of 2022, the kingdom was nearly as...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Alison R. Taylor (University of North Carolina Wilmington Microscopy Facility); Prof. Gordon T. Taylor, Stony Brook University; Keisotyo; Daniel Vaulot, CNRS, Station Biologique de Roscoff; Shane And…, CC BY-SA 3.0