Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to the Protista.
  • noun A member of the Protista; any unicellular organism not definitely regarded as a plant or an animal.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the protists

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun free-living or colonial organisms with diverse nutritional and reproductive modes

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The digestive tracts of herbivorous fishes may contain protistan and bacterial endosymbionts that aid in the digestion of the plant material.

    Coral reef fish feeding behavior in the Caribbean 2008

  • The level of organization seen in Stromatoveris and equivalent Ediacaran fossils seems to transcend protistan complexity.

    Stromatoveris - The Panda's Thumb 2006

  • This story might actually have to wait until we learn more protistan cell biology.

    Research Blogging - All Topics - English Psi Wavefunction, Skeptic Wonder 2010

  • Farmer and Habura point out that protistan evolution had begun well before then and provided the genomic diversity from which multicellular organisms arose.

    Reason Magazine 2010

  • A detailed understanding of protistan biology, therefore, offers scientists and lay persons alike the ability to address current attacks on evolutionary theory, and to refute the claims of ID creationists who insist on invoking supernatural explanations to account for observable phenomena.

    Reason Magazine 2010

  • The data from the planktonic protistan biodiversity (rDNA, rRNA, transcriptomes, imaging) will allow statistical analyses of populations and ecology on the basis of the nucleotidic sequences and their genetic variability.

    Naturejobs - All Jobs 2010

  • DNA and RNA extractions from worldwide protistan populations samples.

    Naturejobs - All Jobs 2010

  • Steenkamp ET, Wright J, Baldauf SL (2006) The protistan origins of animals and fungi.

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Pascal Lapébie et al. 2009

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