We will look a little bit at the diversity of protists. I'm sure nearly everyone here knows all this sort of information because you have probably taught. But just to remind you--again this is an incredibly diverse group--we have amoebae which includes things like the naked amoeba, which is the sort of thing you might put in a lab. Just parenthetically, I almost never see an amoeba when I'm looking at samples but that's what everyone thinks of. The foraminifera which are a group of shelled amoebae that are very important both in the fossil record, as well as in modern settings, radiolaria which are very beautiful are also shelled amoebae but unlike the clams and foraminifera that have carbonated shells, the radiolaria have little glass skeletons, absolutely beautiful.
Protists include non-photosynthetic flagellates, this includes some of the parasites that you might be hearing about later, trypanosomes, as well as some free living species. Trypanosomes, some of them cause sleeping sickness and so on. These are sort of grab bags, these are not necessarily phylogenetic units. And then we include photosynthetic flagellates, which include most algae, some of which are flagellated, some of which aren't, I should point out. Euglenoids - things like that. Then here are ciliates - paramecium, tetrahymena, also just beautiful and wonderful ciliates in there and some of the fungal species. And the sporozoa, some of which cause malaria. So this is incredibly diverse.
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