Nucleariida is a group of amoebae with filose pseudopods, known mostly from soils and freshwater. They are distinguished from the superficially similar vampyrellids mainly by having mitochondria with discoid cristae, in the absence of superficial granules, and in the way they consume food.
In biology, a kingdom is the second highest taxonomic rank, just below domain. Kingdoms are divided into smaller groups called phyla.
The alveolates are a group of protists, considered a major clade and superphylum within Eukarya. They are currently grouped with the stramenopiles and Rhizaria among the protists with tubulocristate mitochondria, the group being referred to as SAR.
Amoebozoa is a major taxonomic group containing about 2,400 described species of amoeboid protists, often possessing blunt, fingerlike, lobose pseudopods and tubular mitochondrial cristae. In traditional and currently no longer supported classification schemes, Amoebozoa is ranked as a phylum within either the kingdom Protista or the kingdom Protozoa. In the classification favored by the International Society of Protistologists, it is retained as an unranked "supergroup" within Eukaryota. Molecular genetic analysis supports Amoebozoa as a monophyletic clade. Modern studies of eukaryotic phylogenetic trees identify it as the sister group to Opisthokonta, another major clade which contains both fungi and animals as well as several other clades comprising some 300 species of unicellular eukaryotes. Amoebozoa and Opisthokonta are sometimes grouped together in a high-level taxon, variously named Unikonta, Amorphea or Opimoda.
The opisthokonts are a broad group of eukaryotes, including both the animal and fungus kingdoms. The opisthokonts, previously called the "Fungi/Metazoa group", are generally recognized as a clade. Opisthokonts together with Apusomonadida and Breviata comprise the larger clade Obazoa.
Amorphea are members of a taxonomic supergroup that includes the basal Amoebozoa and Obazoa. That latter contains the Opisthokonta, which includes the Fungi, Animals and the Choanomonada, or Choanoflagellates. The taxonomic affinities of the members of this clade were originally described and proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith in 2002.
Malawimonadidae is a group of unicellular eukaryotes of outsize importance in understanding eukaryote phylogeny.
Capsaspora is a monotypic genus containing the single species Capsaspora owczarzaki. C. owczarzaki is a single-celled eukaryote that occupies a key phylogenetic position in our understanding of the origin of animal multicellularity, as one of the closest unicellular relatives to animals. It is, together with Ministeria vibrans, a member of the Filasterea clade. This amoeboid protist has been pivotal to unravel the nature of the unicellular ancestor of animals, which has been proved to be much more complex than previously thought.
The SAR supergroup, also just SAR or Harosa, is a clade that includes stramenopiles (heterokonts), alveolates, and Rhizaria. The name is an acronym derived from the first letters of each of these clades; it has been alternatively spelled "RAS". The term "Harosa" has also been used. The SAR supergroup is a node-based taxon.
Filasterea is a proposed basal Filozoan clade that includes Ministeria and Capsaspora. It is a sister clade to the Choanozoa in which the Choanoflagellatea and Animals appeared. Originally proposed by Shalchian-Tabrizi et al. in 2008, based on a phylogenomic analysis with dozens of genes. Filasterea was found to be the sister-group to the clade composed of Metazoa and Choanoflagellata within the Opisthokonta, a finding that has been further corroborated with additional, more taxon-rich, phylogenetic analyses.
Rabdiophrys is a genus of amoeboid rhizarians. It has 19 species, including the species Rabdiophrys anulifera.
Holomycota or Nucletmycea are a basal Opisthokont clade as sister of the Holozoa. It consists of the Cristidiscoidea and the kingdom Fungi. The position of nucleariids, unicellular free-living phagotrophic amoebae, as the earliest lineage of Holomycota suggests that animals and fungi independently acquired complex multicellularity from a common unicellular ancestor and that the osmotrophic lifestyle was originated later in the divergence of this eukaryotic lineage. Opisthosporidians is a recently proposed taxonomic group that includes aphelids, Microsporidia and Cryptomycota, three groups of endoparasites.
The biological classification system of life introduced by British zoologist Thomas Cavalier-Smith involves systematic arrangements of all life forms on earth. Following and improving the classification systems introduced by Carl Linnaeus, Ernst Haeckel, Robert Whittaker, and Carl Woese, Cavalier-Smith's classification attempts to incorporate the latest developments in taxonomy. His classification has been a major foundation in modern taxonomy, particularly with revisions and reorganisations of kingdoms and phyla.
Aphelida is a phylum of Fungi that appears to be the sister to true fungi.
Cryptista is a clade of algae-like eukaryotes. It is most likely related to Archaeplastida which includes plants and many algae, within the larger group Diaphoretickes.
Bigyromonadea is a recently described non-photosynthetic lineage of Heterokonts that at present contains only one species.
Pirsonia is a non photosynthetic genus of heterokonts. It comprises the entirety of the family Pirsoniaceae, order Pirsoniida and class Pirsonea in the subphylum Bigyromonada, phylum Gyrista.
Picophagea, also known as Synchromophyceae, is a class of photosynthetic heterokonts. The chloroplast of the Synchromophyceae are surrounded by two membranes and arranged in a way where they share the outer pair of membranes. The entire chloroplast complex is surrounded by an additional two outer membranes.
Opisthosporidia is a superphylum of intracellular parasites with amoeboid vegetative stage, defined as a common group of eukaryotic groups Microsporidia, Cryptomycota and Aphelidea. They have been considered to represent a monophyletic lineage with shared ecological and structural features, being a sister clade of the Fungi. Together with the Fungi they represent a sister clade of the Cristidiscoidea, together forming the Holomycota.
Parvularia atlantis is a filopodiated amoeba which was isolated from a lake in Atlanta and deposited in the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) under the name Nuclearia sp. ATCC 50694 on 1997 by TK Sawyer. It was classified under the genus Nuclearia and morphologically resembles to Nuclearia species, although it is smaller. Later it was determined that it phylogenetically belongs to a new nucleariid lineage., distantly related to Nuclearia and Fonticula genera –the other two previously described nucleriid genera–.
