Opalinata
Sign in to saveOpalinata is a superclass of non-phagotrophic heterokonts that unites the classes Opalinea and Blastocystea, and is the sister group to Opalomonadea.
Species
Superclass
- PhylumBigyra
via
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Description
- Phylogeny
- Classification
- References
Opalinata is a superclass of non-phagotrophic heterokonts that unites the classes Opalinea and Blastocystea, and is the sister group to Opalomonadea.
==Description== When Opalinata was first erected as a taxon in 1926, it was placed as the sole class in the group "Protociliata" and considered as primitive ciliates due to the fact that they move thanks to their numerous cilia and that they both present two nuclei. They were distinguished because they perform syngamy by the complete fusion of uninucleated gametes, while the rest of the ciliates, forming "Euciliata" (Ciliata + Suctoria), perform syngamy through their micronuclei alone while their macronuclei dissolve.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Opalinata” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.