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| Paramecium, Phylum Ciliophora, Subkingdom Protozoa, Kingdom Protista |
Kingdom Protista are mostly single-celled, eukaryotic, and have distinct, membrane-bounded organelles. These are small animal-like microorganisms that are able to move around and are mostly found in water or some kind of moisture.
Kingdom Protista is divided into two subkingdoms: Protozoa and Algae.
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| Amoeba, Phylum Sarcodina, Subkingdom Protozoa, Kingdom Protista |
Protozoa
The four phyla for subkingdom Protozoa are divided according to how they are able to move about - their locomotion.
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| Student (age 18, special education) made his Amoeba by cutting pieces of construction paper freehand and made a key at the bottom of his notebook page with matching cut-outs. |
Phylum Sarcodina: Some organisms, such as an Amoeba, move with pseudopods (meaning "false feet"), or a foot-like extension of a cell, used for locomotion or engulfing food.
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Another student (age 11) made his Euglena with construction paper, a raffia flagella, which the Euglena uses for locomotion and beans glued on for its organelles. The black beans represent the chloroplasts, which contain chlorophyll for photosynthesis; the kidney bean is the eyespot, which detects more and less light; the black-eyed peas are the contractile vacuoles, which regulate the amount of water in the cell and the lima bean represents the nucleus, which contains the DNA.
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Phylum Mastigophora: Other members of subkingdom Protozoa move about with flagella, which are whip-like rotating structures that look like tails, like the Euglena.
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| Euglena, Phylum Mastigophora, Subkingdom Protozoa, Kingdom Protista |
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| A student demonstrates how the flagella spins around to produce locomotion. |
Some, like the Volvox, which are really colonies, have more than one flagella.
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| Another student (age 8) made this Paramecium from construction paper. He fringed the edges all around (which might be a bit hard to see in the photo) by cutting slits to represent the cilia, which the organism uses for locomotion. He drew on the various organelles with colored pencils. The star-shaped organelles are the contractile vacuoles, which regulates the amount of water in the cell. The larger rectangle is the Macronucleus, which controls metabolism. The indentation is the oral groove and the bean-shaped organelle below this is the oral pore and the gullet, which all work together to sweep food into cell, which it then sends off in bundles throughout the cell, called a food vacuole, which are the smaller rectangles. |
Phylum Ciliophora: Some, like the Paramecium, move with little hair-like extensions called cilia.
Phylum Sporozoa: And lastly, some have no means of locomotion, and do not fit in the other three phyla, and therefore have its own phylum. The parasite Plasmodium, that causes malaria, is in this Phylum.
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| Spyrogyra, Phylum Chlorophyta, Subkingdom Algae, Kingdom Protista |
Algae
Subkingdom Algae is divided into five phyla. The division for Algae is based on their habitat (some can live in salt water and some in fresh water), organization (whether they are single or multicellular; either way, their cells are all eukaryotic.) and type of cell wall.
- Phylum Chlorophyta is characterized by greenish algae which live in mostly fresh water. An example is Spyrogyra.
- Phylum Chrysophyta has one of the most interesting microscopic creatures I know, the genus Diatom. These are a very beautiful and unique type of algae, mostly because their cell walls are composed of silicon dioxide, which is the main component of glass. It remains hard long after the diatom dies. They form crystal-like formations of many different types.
- Phylum Pyrophyta live in marine waters and exist as single cells. They have two flagella of unequal length and therefore often called dinoflagellates.
- Phylum Phaeophyta are brown algae and are multicellular organisms that inhabit the cold ocean waters.
- Phylum Rhodophyta are red algae and are also multicellular and live in warm marine waters.
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| Genus Diatom, Phylum Chrysophyta, Subkingdom Algae, Kingdom Protista |
sources and inspiration:
Some, like the Volvox, which are really colonies, have more than one flagella.
Subkingdom Algae is divided into five phyla. The division for Algae is based on their habitat (some can live in salt water and some in fresh water), organization (whether they are single or multicellular; either way, their cells are all eukaryotic.) and type of cell wall.
