Filasterea

Filasterea is a basal Filozoan clade of single-celled ameboid eukaryotes that includes Ministeria and Capsaspora. It is a sister clade to the Choanozoa in which the choanoflagellates and animals appeared, originally proposed by Shalchian-Tabrizi et al. in 2008, based on a phylogenomic analysis with 78 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.

Capsaspora is a monotypic genus of protists 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 unraveling the nature of the unicellular ancestor of animals, which has been proved to be much more complex than previously thought.

Ministeria is a genus of Filasterea. The species can be found in the North Atlantic Ocean and in British waters.

species of Cristidiscoidea