What are some general characteristics of Kingdom Protista?
Protists (IPA: /ˈproʊtɨst/), Greek protiston -a meaning the (most) first of all ones, are a diverse group of organisms, comprising those eukaryotes that cannot be classified in any of the other kingdoms as fungi, animals, or plants. They are usually treated as the kingdom Protista or Protoctista. Protoctists (or protists) are a paraphyletic grade, rather than a natural, (monophyletic) group, and so do not have much in common besides a relatively simple organization — either they are unicellular, or they are multicellular without highly specialized tissues. The term protista was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Protists were traditionally subdivided into several groups based on similarities to the “higher” kingdoms: the one-celled animal-like protozoa, the plant-like protophyta (mostly one-celled algae), and the fungus-like slime molds and water molds.
