Observing Protists Through Hay Infusion Preparation Essay Example

Introduction: Historically, protists were treated as the kingdom Protista.

The term protista was first used by Ernest Haeckel in 1866. The first division of the protists from other organisms came in the 1830s, when the German biologist Georg August Goldfuss introduced the word protozoa to refer to organisms such as ciliates and corals. This group was expanded in 1845 to include all "unicellular animals", such as Foraminifera and amoebae. The formal taxonomic category Protoctista was first proposed in the early 1860s by John Hogg.

The kingdom of minerals was later removed from taxonomy by Ernest Haeckel, leaving plants, animals, and the protists as a “kingdom of primitive forms”. Herbert Copeland resurrected Hogg's label almost a century later, arguing that "Protoctista" literally meant "first established beings”. Whittaker later defined Fungi, Animalia, Plantae and Protista as the four kingdoms of life. The kingdom Protista was later modified to separate prokaryotes into the separate kingdom of Monera, leaving the protists as a group of eukaryotic microorganisms.

These five kingdoms remained the accepted classification until the development of molecular phylogenetics in the late 20th century, when it became apparent that neither protists nor monera were single groups of related organisms. Protists are extremely important in ecological and medical research. In medicine, certain protists are used to study the relationship between chromosomal structure and aging. Multicellular protists as slime molds provide valuable insight about the chemical signals used in more complex organisms to coordinate cellular activity.