A114 Protist Kingdom
Carl Linnaeus published the first
edition of his
Systema Naturae
was published in 1735.
It and later editions
divided all life into two kingdoms: plant
and animal.
German biologist Ernst Haeckle (see
Haeckel's Invertebrates) used a
microscope to discover thousands of previously unknown
species. They were not animals, nor plants, so Haeckle
established the Protisa Kingdom in 1866.
Protists are a large and
diverse group of eukaryotic microorganisms. Their simple
cellular organization distinguishes them from animals,
plants and fungi. There are many species with similar
physical characteristics and they have been grouped together
and such groups has been given a name, such as Excavata. The
problem is that they are not closely related through
evolution, life cycle, physical characteristics, modes of
locomotion or cellular structure. The lack of this preclude
the establishing of a larger classification system.
To use an analogy, biologists may group related species together
and call them monkeys. They may do it again with another
group that they call penguins. Both of these groups do share
a common physical characteristic. They are both vertebrates.
As additional species are discovered and grouped together,
it makes it possible to define sub-groups, such as mammals
and birds and then families. This is no the case with the
protists. There have been numerous classification
systems suggested, but none have been widely accepted, as
there is simply not enough known about them.
The result in that is the protists have become somewhat of a
catch-all kingdom. If it doesn't fit into one of the clearly
defined kingdoms, its dumped into the protist "bucket."
The primary purpose of this poster is to introduce the
subject. It is divided into clearly identifiable and
recognized groups. Each is introduced and many
representative species are shown. There has been very little
published on this subject and information for schools is all
but non-existent. This poster is the ideal companion to our
Animal
Kingdom and
Plant
Kingdom posters.
STATUS: The above layout shows our
first draft. It was largely compiled from information
gleaned from the popular online Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
However as we really began working on this poster, we found
a great many contradictions between articles, probably the
result of them having been written by different authors. It
was exceptionally difficult to find reference pictures for
our artist to create illustrations and we came to discover
that a very high percentage of the images on internet are
misidentified. The subject was so frustrating that we were
ready to abandon the project, but then happily discovered
one of the few an experts on the subject. He was vary
familiar with the problems we had encountered and was he who
recommended the approach that we now using. He is now
working closely with us, providing invaluable information
and a wealth of documented reference images.
It has become apparent that everything we have done to date
was a waste of time, so we are starting over again from
scratch. The only value to the above layout is that shows
that the Protists Kingdom poster will use the same graphic
design as Animal and Plant Kingdom, resulting in a matched
set.
