Overview
The Sarcomastigophora belongs to the Protist kingdom and it includes many unicellular or colonial, autotrophic, or heterotrophic organisms. The two main subphyla are Mastigophora and Sarcodina. A third is Opalinata.1]
It is polyphyletic, and it is not a universally recognized classification. It places great significance upon method of locomotion in generating the taxonomy.
It can be described as kingdom Protista ? phylum Sarcomastigophora ? subphylum Mastigophora, or as phylum Protozoa ? subphylum Sarcomastigophora ? class Mastigophora.[2]
It gets its name from the combination of "Sarcodina" (which is an older term used for amoeboids)[3] and "Mastigophora" (which is an older term for flagellates).
Taxonomy
The Phylum Sarcomastigophora is further organized into finer groupings including:
- Class (4): Granuloreticulosea · Phytomastigophora · Rhizopoda · Zoomastigophora
- Species: ZipcodeZoo has pages for 108 species and subspecies in the Phylum Sarcomastigophora.
Classes
Granuloreticulosea
The Foraminifera, ("Hole Bearers") or forams for short, are a large group of protists with reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net. They typically produce a test, or shell, which can have either one or multiple chambers, some becoming quite elaborate in structure. These shells are made of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) or agglutinated sediment particles. About 275,000 species are recognized, both living and fossil.[citation needed] They are usually less than 1 mm in size, but some are much larger, and the largest recorded specimen reached 19 cm.[citation needed] [more]
Phytomastigophora
Rhizopoda
Zoomastigophora
At least 24 species and subspecies belong to the Class Zoomastigophora.
More info about the Class Zoomastigophora may be found here.
References
- ^ MeSH Sarcomastigophora
- ^ Dunster, Katherine; Dunster, Julian A. (1996). Dictionary of natural resource management. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 337. ISBN 0-7748-0503-X.
- ^ Pawlowski J, Burki F (2009). "Untangling the phylogeny of amoeboid protists". J. Eukaryot. Microbiol. 56 (1): 16–25. doi:
Sources
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