Slime molds are single celled protists that live in moist soils, decaying plants, and trees. But when conditions are bad, the single celled organisms would join together and act as a multicellular organism. The protist would form a cluster of cells called sporangia on top of a stalk. The sporangia would then go into a dormant stage while the stalk constantly pushes the cells with its ”foot” until the cells reaches a better condition. That time, the multicellular organism would spilt itself back to its original form.

 

Slime Molds

This is the protist that surprised me the most. The slime molds could join together when times are tough, move to another place and separate again. This showed me the importance and the great power of teamwork and how weak individuals really are.

Euglena

Euglenas are single celled phytoplanktons that live in the water. Euglena contains a nucleus, choloroplasts, flagellum, eye spot, contractille vacuole, pellicle, and cell membrane. They would use their chloroplasts for photosynthesis but when it’s dark; they could turn into heterotrophs and search for foods themselves. Euglenas have an eye spot that could detect light and dark, and they have a pellicle that’s used as a cell wall to maintain its shape. Finally, they have asexual reproduction by binary fission. Like the amoeba, it would divide its every body parts into two, and then the middle would split, separating the organism into two.

Euglena Dividing

I think it’s really cool how the Euglena could change from being an autotrophic into a heterotrophic if their aren’t any sunlight. I don’t think there’s anything besides this organism that could do that and i find that really interesting.

Amoeba

Amoebas are single celled protists that have no definite shape. They have a nucleus, food vacuole, contractile vacuole, cell membrane, pseudopods and amoeba feeding. Though they don’t have any teeth or mouths, they would engulf their preys (holozoic), absorb their nutrients through their membrane (saprozoic) and finally storing them in a food vacuole. Pseudopods (“false feet”) are what they use to capture their prey by “flowing” towards it.

Amoeba has asexual reproduction with binary fission. First the pseudopod would pull away while the nucleus replicates itself. The pseudopod would finally break apart splitting the cell, resulting to two new identical cells.

Amoeba Reproduction

I think it’s really sweet how the amoeba could change its shape to anything they want themselves to be. Many movies and shows have this idea in it. For example this kind of reminds me of an episode in SpongeBob Squarepants where SpongeBob could blow any shape of bubble he wants and in the end, a giant bubble engulfed Squidward’s house and popped after reaching to the surface of the ocean.

During the late 1800s, a new kingdom was created for the microscopic creatures. Although protists are not plants, animals and fungi, they still live, eat , reproduce and contain parts such as nucleus and organisms like other living things. Protists also have many shapes. Some like amoeba could change their shapes while some are stiff. They mainly live in water or moist soil and have two different ways to get food, using photosynthesis (photoautotrophs) or eating other organisms (heterotrophs). But not all protists are good; some could cause serious human disease such as malaria and sleeping sickness.

I think protists are really cool. We don’t ever notice these microscopic organisms even though we interact with them every single day. What really surprised me is that Antoni van Leeuwenhoek was able to discover these amazing creatures 300 years ago. They didn’t have any sort of technology like the ones today but he’s still able to overcome it and discover these protists by himself. But I didn’t really like the fact that they put the protists into a kingdom because they were considered “leftovers”. Though we have come a long ways in discovering the protist’s characteristics, reproduction, etc… I’m not that satisfied. I wish we could discover more and put them in their appropriate kingdoms where the organisms would have way more similarities than it is right now.