Talk:Protist

Definition of protist

@Iztwoz: apologies for reverting you earlier, but it seems you are correct. But there seems to be two different definitions of protists about:

1. Any eukaryote that is not an animal, plant, or fungus.
2. Any unicellular eukaryote.

I was not aware of the second definition. However, these two definitions are not mutually consistent. Yeasts are fungi, but they are also unicellular eukaryotes, so that would mean that the first definition is at odds with the second. Also things like slime molds often have multicellular stages, but are usually viewed as protists.

I have reverted one of reverts. I think maybe the best thing is to give both definitions, as there are sources that use them both. It would bring them closer to The term protist typically is used in reference to a eukaryote that is not a true animal, plant, or fungus or in reference to a eukaryote that lacks a multicellular stage. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:04, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree that (a) both definitions are in use, at least in sources I read, so (b) we need to give both. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:33, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite

Well, this article is in a sorry state. Large chunks of it are uncited. The approach to taxonomy is basically a disaster: one can hear the old protistologists in full retreat as the long-range rockets of molecular phylogenomics crash into every part of the front. The writing is appalling, what with the "(flagellated) Flagellata", the "(ciliated) Ciliophora", and yes the "(spore-forming) Sporozoa". I'm sorry but we have to do better than this, our readers aren't ducks and they don't expect us to quack. The other obvious problem is that since "protists" are actually scattered all over the tree of Eukaryote#Phylogeny, this article is doing very little other than scampering about that tree trying in vain to say something more or less coherent about the little beasties that make up almost every phylum, kingdom, clade, or paraphyletic grouping of eukaryotes, without simply repeating what the Eukaryote article says from top to bottom, and (apparently) trying desperately not to actually display that phylogenetic tree.

A better approach would be to say simply and clearly that this is a historic taxon; here is the history; the idea of it as a kingdom has fallen to bits; it has been replaced by a far more integrated approach to biology; and that areas of study include phylogeny and parasitology. The rest of the text can be replaced by "main" links to other articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:27, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I totally agree. Plantsurfer 21:08, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

And Protozoa is a separate (and better-written) article, covering most or all of the same territory, and indeed discussing both "Protista" and "Protoctista". I think we should simply redirect as this is a content fork. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:28, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Your redirect is a terrible idea and ought to be undone; it's only confusing to anybody who isn't a microbiologist and who learned Protista as one of the Kingdoms in school. At the very least, Protista included both phytoprotists (algae and diatoms) and zooprotists, making it inappropriate for Protista to redirect to what is effectively the page for the old "zooprotist" grouping. Your original idea as to describing Protista as a defunct term made perfect sense: redirecting it to a polyphyletic group that only accounts for ~½ of Protista makes absolutely none. 2600:1004:B101:2112:7924:F2FB:6510:971A (talk) 21:15, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

It's polyphyletic either way, and under various vague definitions contains similar groups-- the 1/2 thing just isn't right. The text now is a whole lot better, too, and there is an organic connection through the history as the terms changed. Would Protista be a better name for the article --- perhaps it would. Do we need two articles --- absolutely not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:51, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the anonymous comment above, this is not a good move! "Protist" is not a synonym for "Protozoa", and the original article should be restored and improved, not redirected.

The word "protist" is widely used as an informal term for an area of study that excludes plants, animals and fungi. It is term of convenience, like "algae". The eukaryotic microbiologists who use the term in this way are not clueless fuddy-duddies resisting the revolution brought about by molecular phylogenetics. On the contrary, they tend to be researchers at the forefront of that revolution. They are people like Fabien Burki who wrote a paper in 2021 that began with the sentence "Protists are the dominant eukaryotes in the biosphere where they play key functional roles." Or Patrick Keeling, whose website says: "Our work is on the molecular evolution of protists, or single celled eukaryotes. Protists comprise the vast majority of eukaryotic diversity, but we know comparatively little about their biology or evolutionary history." Or Alastair Simpson, whose lab discovered the new superkingdom Hemimastigophora, and writes "I work with 'protists', that is, all those eukaryotes that are NOT animals, plants or fungi. Most protists are inconspicuous single cells, but they comprise the vast bulk of eukaryote biodiversity".

Yes, "protists" are a polyphyletic assemblage, and as a formal taxon ("Kingdom Protista") it is obsolete. That's understood. However, it remains useful as a term for an area of study.

Consider the influential series of papers on high-level eukaryote classification issued by Sina Adl and his colleagues, the most recent of which is Adl et al., 2019. It is a strictly cladistic classification, but I would guess that most of the 50-or-so signatories of the paper consider themselves to be "protistologists." The work was carried out under the auspices of the International Society of Protistologists, and published in the organ of that group, the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. Sina Adl himself describes his research area as "Protist diversity and systematics."

The term "protozoa" is restricted, by tradition, to heterotrophic unicellular organisms, whereas the term "protist" can include photosynthetic lineages, including many that have multicellular members. The massive Handbook of the Protists published in 2017 includes chapters on red algae (Rhodophytes), a chapter on brown algae (phaeophytes), and chapters on various green algae (zignematophytes, charophytes, etc.). These are not, in any sense, "protozoa"!

Please put things back the way they were. I agree that the "protist" article wasn't very good, but it needs to be improved, not removed.

Deuterostome (Talk) 11:27, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

It does seem clear that whatever was the case historically, currently "protist" is widely used, sometimes with the meaning "single-celled eukaryote", and sometimes "eukaryotes that are not clearly animals, plants (including here multicellular algae) or fungi". It absolutely does not equate to "protozoa". It should cover with both the historical and the current usage. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:32, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm a bit late but frankly this is all ridiculous and it goes directly against how Wikipedia works. Protist is NOT the same as Protozoa, it is painfully obvious (someone forgot algae exist, apparently, or that words have meanings). Besides, as a word "protist" has never been replaced, so why should we replace it? This whole ordeal feels like pushing a subjective agenda of one person over the reality of scientific research. "Protist" as a word is very much in use, regardless if it's paraphyletic or not, because its paraphyly has nothing to do with whether or not it gets to exist. And the quality of one term's page is no excuse to entirely remove it and treat it as a direct synonym of a completely different term's page. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 16:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I've reverted the erasure. And to add more, this article is literally present in 109 languages across all Wikipedia, and is a level-4 vital article in the English Wikipedia, so I can't possibly understand why this erasure was even considered. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 16:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 17 May 2023

This is currently a double redirect: Protista →‎ Protist →‎ Protozoa. Please make it a single redirect: Protista →‎ Protozoa. Trey314159 (talk) 16:11, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

{{Rcat shell}} should be added to categorize it's protection status, too. I don't know how this page name relates to protozoa so I don't know what subcategorization would be added. SWinxy (talk) 20:00, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

 Done The known change is done. Izno (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 19 May 2023

Change "Protozoa" to "Protist". ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 16:41, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

It would be more useful to have protection removed as it would not be fully protected under current policy. Peter James (talk) 16:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

 Already done Hyphenation Expert (talk) 17:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

BLAR to Protozoa

Chiswick Chap BLAR'd this page to Protozoa, giving the following as a rationale: redir to synonym where better discussed: insofar as vaguely-defined paraphyletic groupings can have synonyms. Trey314159 made an edit request to fix the double redirect that was a side effect of that change. Snoteleks restored the article, saying Protist Is Not The Same As Protozoa. I'm not a biologist so I'm not sure what's correct. Could Chis and Sno (politely) chime in? SWinxy (talk) 22:01, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

@SWinxy In short, Protist ≠ Protozoa. Protist is a widely used term by the scientific community, and everyone else that replied to the BLAR already acknowledged that the BLAR did not follow any kind of scientific consensus. Afterwards, I made an edit request to revert Trey's edit request, because Protista = Protist. I'm afraid further explanations would require some biological terminology, but I think it can be summarized as: even though protozoa are indeed protists, not all protists are protozoa, as there are other protists that are not protozoa. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 23:29, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh I didn't see the discussion above. SWinxy (talk) 00:05, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Well we still don't need two articles on these heavily- overlapping polyphyletic groups. The current text here is an uncited and confused mess. The text over at Protozoa covers the ground much better, so why don't we use that over here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:58, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap Even if the current text was the worst written article possible, that's still not a reason to replace it with a redirect to a different article. And by "heavily overlapping" what exactly do you mean? Prokaryotes are >95% Bacteria, but you don't see anyone replacing Prokaryote with Bacteria. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 09:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

There's no comparison, and talking about other cases just confuses the situation further. The "protozoa" and "protista" are more than just overlapping; both names are poly-everything and represent(ed) small stuff that didn't fit into any decent classification, like "Vermes" back in Linnaeus's day, "un espece de chaos", a sack of stuff that didn't fit anywhere else. But no, I agree, the "'protists'" include things that people supposed were "nearly-plants" and "nearly-fungi" as well as the "nearly-animal" protozoa, so for historical reasons we can have both articles; if we were going to have just one article it would have had to be under the more inclusive name. But since it seems we're having two articles, it will make sense to borrow much of the reliably-cited text in Protozoa which in fact covers a lot of "Protista" already. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:57, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Of course, we can borrow reliably-cited text in Protozoa for Protista, as long as it talks about protists as a whole. There's no issue with that. There is a lot of information that pertains to Protista more than to only Protozoa, such as the paper that talks about the total biomass of protists, or the Handbook of Protists book. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 11:15, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

If there is to be a single article covering protozoa/protista, it should be at the title Protista or protist. Yes, it's polyphyletic either way, but protozoans are all protists, but not all protists are protozoans. Plantdrew (talk) 03:40, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Big changes to the article

Hi, for the past days I've been making a lot of changes and revisions to this article, especially in the History and Reproduction sections. I'm also planning on overhauling the Overview and Subdivisions section for something more coherent, and erasing citations that lead to (personalized? idk how to call them) websites instead of publications. I appreciate if people take time to see the changes I've already made. Please feel free to add suggestions and contribute! ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 15:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for taking on this task, and for the substantial contributions!

I would only suggest citing more secondary sources, such as review articles, in addition to directly citing primary research literature, per Wikipedia:RSPRIMARY. Especially when citing historical works, the synthesis and contextualization of their findings with respect to current knowledge should come from a secondary source. Kbseah (talk) 17:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Kbseah Agreed. There's definitely a lot of secondary revisions too, even through the History section alone I was able to find a few. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 12:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for taking up this work @Snoteleks J mareeswaran (talk) 03:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Protist/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Etriusus (talk · contribs) 05:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Grabbing this, my notes are a mess right now, I'll have them cleaned up soon enough. Glad to see you again for another GA review, it's always a pleasure to see the same nominators show up again from time-to-time. I already know how big Vital article reviews can get, so I'll be lenient on the time constraints. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 05:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Etriusus, thank you for reviewing. I will try to answer to every point here:

Images

• "File:Biomass of Earth 2018.svg" This image is rather redundant to the prose and just clogs up the page

• Images: took out the redundant image.

• File:Giardia lamblia.jpg link doesn't redirect properly, possible dead link
• There are a large number of the captions are unsourced. Most of these captions are too complex/detailed to fall under obvious knowledge.
• As a whole, I'd say about a half dozen of these images should be cut, per MOS:NOTGALLERY. There are two many images, oftentimes, the images are too specific for what should be a rather broad subject.

Sourcing

• "Protist pathogens share many metabolic pathways..." latter half of this paragraph is unsourced
• "Fossil record" entire section is unsourced

• Sourcing: deleted the unsourced paragraph on parasites. I will redo the entire fossil section within the next days, it's something I've been wanting to do since I started working on this article. Right now I have not enough time, but I will get to it soon.

Copy-Vios

• Neither spot checks nor Earwig finds anything of note. I'll do more, but no news is good news.

External Links

• A java applet for exploring the new higher level classification of eukaryotes - Java applets have been largely defunct since 2020ish, neither firefox nor chrome support it.
• Holt, Jack R. and Carlos A. Iudica. (2013). Diversity of Life. http://comenius.susqu.edu/biol/202/Taxa.htm. Last modified: 11/18/13. -dead link
• Plankton Chronicles – Protists – Cells in the Sea – video -Not supported either, I couldn't get the video to work

• External links: deleted unworking links and added one working link.

Prose

• Lead is way too short for a level 4 vital article. I'd expect at least 2 hearty paragraphs.
• Protists represent an extremely large, undescribed genetic and ecological diversity, recognized only in recent decades and still in the process of being fully discovered. Sentence needs grammar clean-up, hard to follow
• "The study of protists is termed protistology." Not technically cited
• Examples of basic protist forms, that do not represent evolutionary cohesive lineages, include: The point of this bulleted list is vague, appears to be largely redundant to the classification section.
• "lineages" please define what this means
• " stalked reproductive structures " link
• "often very distantly from true fungi" specify
• "elucidated " simplify
• "and novel biodiversity" what does this mean? clarify
• "resulting in dramatic changes to the eukaryotic tree of life." Cut, WP:PUFFERY
• The newest classification systems of eukaryotes do not recognize the formal taxonomic ranks (phylum, class, order...) and instead only recognize the group that are clades of related organisms, making the classification more stable in the long term and easier to update.

-Is this sentence necessary? Unless you're prepared to discuss the complexities of the old and new system, mentioning that Protist use a clad system should suffice. Also, grammar.

• "Viridiplantae or Chloroplastida..." specify that its 7000 species, 10 species, etc. in the parenthesis
• "Sar, SAR or Harosa – a clade of three highly diverse lineages exclusively containing protists. " Please explain exactly what unifies this superclad
• "extremely diverse " WP:PUFFERY
• " some unusual algae" cut unusual, unless you can elaborate
• " large and abundant" clarify or cut
• Much of the rhizarian diversity lies within the phylum Cercozoa, filled with free-living flagellates which usually have pseudopodia, as well as Phaeodaria, a group previously considered radiolarian run-on
• "important parasites" again, WP:PUFFERY
• As a whole, the Modern classification section is too detailed. There are already two other articles that link from this, this is the point of having a see also/main article template. This section should be substantially shortened, especially since you already have a cladogram present.
• Don't collapse the cladogram
• The history section is missing a large amount of info, there's no mention of Antony van Leeuwenhoek's animalcules classification
• So, I can't read German. But English sources say that Goldfuss referred to them as "protozoon"
• 'Historical classifications' make a level 1 heading
• " bacteria and eukaryotes, both unicellular and multicellular organisms, as Protista." Reword, this implies that bacteria=unicellular and eukaryotes=multicellular. I get that in broad strokes this is generally accepted but Eukaryotes aren't universally multicellular.
• "He retained the Infusoria" specify who
• "At first, he included sponges and fungi," again, specify who
• "He clearly separated Protista..." cut 'clearly
• "German naturalists asserted this view over the worldwide scientific community by the turn of the century." and "dogma of German cell theory." almost like WP:POV
• " which the term Protoctista (meaning "first established beings") did not" did not what?
• "According to molecular data" bordering on WP:WEASEL
• "in several groups the number of predicted" WP:WEASEL
• "morphological diagnoses" what does this even mean?
• An unexpectedly enormous, taxonomically undescribed diversity of eukaryotic microbes is detected everywhere in the form of environmental DNA or RNA. Simplify this, wayyy too many buzzwords
• "probably constrained by intense predation" Don't say 'probably' be more specific on why there is doubt.
• You say " highly diverse", "extremely diverse", etc. throughout. At this point it's just WP:PUFFERY. Please go through the article and clean these up.
• "; fractions larger than 5 μm are instead dominated by diatoms and dinoflagellates" reword, simplify
• Mixotrophic marine protists, while not very researched, are present abundantly and ubiquitously in the global oceans, on a wide range of marine habitats reword
• "They are an important and underestimated source" vague sentence
• "They can be divided into two" two what?
• "dinoflagellates" define
• "Generalist ciliates can account for up to 50% of ciliate communities in the photic zone. The endosymbiotic mixotrophs are the most abundant non-constitutive type" Cut, this info is out of ordeer for the flow of the paragraph and just confuses the reader.
• "highly heterogeneous" "hydrological dynamic" unnecessary jargon
• "behave alternatively" alternative to what?
• " are ecologically the richest" What does this mean?
• "extremely heterogenous" WP:PUFFERY, simplify
• The constantly changing environment promotes the activity of only one part of the community at a time, while the rest remains inactive; this phenomenon promotes high microbial diversity in prokaryotes as well as protists. sentence is missing a ton of context, how does it do this? why is it constantly changing? This sentence assumes info that isn't there.
• "oceanic systems" just say oceans
• "Around 100 protist species can infect humans. Recent papers have proposed the use of viruses to treat infections caused by protozoa." This is all you're going to say? This is a very complex issue.
• "a cycle of diastole and systole" you mean contraction
• "early mitochondria" clarify, do you mean primeval or dividing mitochondria
• "probably all motile algae exhibit a positive" dont use probably, remove positive

-You establish how they do this but never explain why.

• Add, See main: Evolution of sexual reproduction
• "This view was further supported by a 2011..." cut paragraph, or condense to a sentence. Amoebae is a very broad category that includes multiple kingdoms.
• "extremely complex" cut
• "invertebrate vector," buzz words
• You said you'd redo the "Fossil record" section, so me reviewing this is largely irrelevant.

• Prose:
  • I expanded the lead, let me know what you think now. Should it be longer?
  • Cleaned up the grammar of that long phrase, dividing it into several.
  • I cited the protistology phrase, see: "He (Otto Butschli) coined the term protistology and solidified it as a branch of study independent from zoology and botany"
  • I don't think this list is redundant. The 'Classification' section talks of purely taxonomical and phylogenetic classifications, while this list represents the living forms most people recognize as protists. It's an informal, purely visual classification, and I think it's important that it goes in the 'Definition' section. Is there any way I can improve it? —Snoteleks 🦠 12:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

-If that's the case, please clarify what criteria are being used. It is rather vague on what is being classified, all it says is " basic protist forms" which could mean anything. As a whole, I still struggle to see why the list isn't just a part of the classification section.

---

There is little discussion about evolution, or endosymbiotic theory, which is a major component to understanding protists. There is almost no discussion about interactions with humans, including food and medicine. The use of a definition section, followed by a classification section is something that is difficult to follow and feels like an arbitrary separation. If this bulleted list is based upon morphological differences, why is this not in the Biology and Physiology section?

I used Plant and Bacteria as comparative models for this review, both of these articles are far more digestible. As a whole, the article suffers from a writing style that is WP:TECHNICAL and at times devolves into full on journal club. I get that you're an expert in this field, but remember that the article needs to been kept at a reading level that is understandable to the average person, I hold a degree in anatomy and still had difficulty following this at times. The prose as a whole needs to be simplified, and streamlined. Some sections are overly detailed while others are super short. The standards for species articles' wording tend to be lower since the literature is limited, but this is a broad, level 4 vital article. I recommend sending this to WP:GCE.

More specifically, the page loses the forest for the trees. It spends a large amount of time on specific protists and how to classify them, but doesn't give a broad idea of what a protist is or does. At this time, I am going to fail the article, the prose issue is systemic and there's an entire section that is completely unsourced. I understand that failing a GA review can be disheartening, but I applaud the work you'd done so far. Given some time, this will make a fine addition to the GA halls. I hope to see this at GA again, soon!!! 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 05:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Confusing info

I'm not a biologist, so maybe this is a dumb question, but the lead says

A protist (/ˈproʊtɪst/ PROH-tist) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, plant, or fungus. 

It then says

Today, protists are composed of several supergroups, including Archaeplastida (which includes plants), SAR, Obazoa (which includes fungi and animals), Amoebozoa and the paraphyletic "Excavata".

It sounds like it is saying they are not plants or animals, but then it says they are made up of groups that consist of plants and animals. Is there a more elegant way of phrasing this so it doesn't sound contradictory? STEMinfo (talk) 19:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@STEMinfo You're right, it is confusing. I tweaked the text, let me know if it is easier to understand now. The point is this: protists are paraphyletic because animals, fungi and plants evolved from them. It's like the situation with crustaceans: they're paraphyletic because insects evolved from them, and insects are not crustaceans. Those clades (Archaeplastida, Obazoa) contain both protists and plants/animals/fungi, in the same way that Pancrustacea contains both crustaceans and insects. —Snoteleks 🦠 10:51, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: It reads better much now. Thanks for diving in. STEMinfo (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@STEMinfo No problem. Let me know if I can have a go at fixing something else in the article. —Snoteleks 🦠 18:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: Please do. I'm not the formal good article reviewer for this one. I was summoned by the bot and am just fixing obvious issues I notice. STEMinfo (talk) 19:08, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: I discovered the {{in use}} template, which puts a banner on top letting others know that you are doing edits, to minimize edit conflicts. STEMinfo (talk) 19:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@STEMinfo Thanks, sounds like a useful template. However the GA review got failed prematurely so now I don't have such a strong time constraint to make all the edits. I might use the {{under construction}} instead, to at least warn that it is a work in progress. —Snoteleks 🦠 12:13, 11 August 2023 (UTC)