Question

Some scientists call the Kingdom Protists the ‘miscellaneous’ kingdom, where all things that are not obviously a plant, animal, fungi, or prokaryotes are lumped together. Others argue that Protists as a group are uniquely different from all other life forms. Make an argument on both sides, using specific characteristics of Protists to support your positions.

Answer 1

Protists are the unicellular Eukaryotic organisms which show characteristics similar to all the other three types of eukaryotes, fungus, plants and animals. Because their origin is not from a single common ancestor, they form a paraphyletic group on a phylogenetic tree. A paraphyletic group is the one which includes an ancestor and some of its descendants.

This very unique feature of members of Kingdom Protista is because they are claimed by both botanist and zoologist.

Some of the protist have animal like characters like heterotrophic nutrition by which they are able to cause diseases in animal and also decomposers in nature, absence of cell wall, have flagellated cells in their life cycle etc.

Whereas some other protists has plant like characters like the ability to undergo photosynthesis because chlorophyll is present, non motile, cellulosic cell wall, presence of vacuole etc.

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