Oomycota

(egg fungi)

Examples: Potato blight fungus

Characteristics and Significance: Produce spores in an oospore. Thrives in damp conditions and cause major mold damage to portatoes, grapes, adn other crops; fuzzy white growths on fish in aquaria; motile spores disperse by swimming

Zygomycota

(Bread molds)

Examples: Common black bread mold

Characteristics and Significance: produce spores in a zygospore, produce diploid spores in cottony mats of hyphae on breads, grains or other foods

Ascomycota

(sac fungi)

Examples: pink bread mold, brewer's yeast, morels, truffles, powdery mildews

Characteristics and Significance: Produce spores ina n ascus or sac, borne in a cup shaped body; yeasts make this the most economically useful fungal group; morels and truffles are edible delicacies; powdery mildews harm fruit trees and grain crops; other diseases are chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease

Basidiomycota

(club fungi)

Examples: common field mushrooms, giant puffballs, bracket fungi, toadstools, smuts, rusts

Characteristics and Significance: Produce spores in club-shaped basidia; the fruiting body is the familiar mushroom or toadstool, which can be extrememly posonous; smuts and rusts damage grain, fruit and tree crops

Deuteromycota

(imperfect fungi)

Examples: penicillium, aspergillus, verticillium, anthracnose

Characteristics and Significance: Lack sexual reproduction and instead produce asexual spores; various species are used in making drugs, bleu cheese, and soy sauce; responsible for athletes foot disease

Methanogens

(Archaebacteria)

Main habitats: Anaerobic sediments of lakes, swamps; also animal gut. Natural gas environments.

Characteristics: Chemosynthetic/chemiautotrophs; methan producers; used in sewage treatment facilities

Representatitves: Methanobacterium

Extreme Halophiles

(Archaebacteria)

Main Habitats: Brines (extrememly salty water)

Characteristics; Heterotrophic; also have unique photosynthetic machinery

Representative: Halobacterium

Termoacidophiles

(archaebacteria)

Main Habitats: Acidic soil, hot springs, hydorthermal vents on sea floor. Anyplace hot.

Characteristics:Heterotrophic or chemosynthetic; use inorganic substances such as sulfur as a source of electrons for ATP formation

Representatives:Sulfolobus, Thermoplasma 

Cyanobacteria

(cyanobacteria)

Main Habitats: mostly lakes, ponds; some marine, terrestrial

Characteristics: In photosynthesis, water is electron donor, oxygen a by-product; Photoauotrophs; some fix nitrogen

Representatives: Anabaena, Nostoc, Oscillatoria, Spirulina

Spriochetes

(eubacteria)

Main habitats: aquatic habitats; parasites of animals

Characteristics Helically coiled, motile; free-living and parasitic species; some major pathogens

Representatives: Borrelia (Lyme disease), Treponema (Syphilis, yaws)

Gram-negative, aerobic rods and cocci

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: Soil, aquatic habitats; parasites of animals and plants

Characterisitcs: Some major pathogens; Rhizombius species fix nitrogen in symbiosis with legumes; free-living Azotobacters species fix nitrogen

Representatives: Pseudomonas, Neisseria (Gonorrhea), Rhizombius, Agrabacterium (plant pathogen used in recominbinant DNA technology), Azotobacter

Gram-negative, faculatative anaerobic rods

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: Soil, plants, animal gut

Characteristics: Many are major pathogens; one is a part of the natural flora in human intestines

Respresentatives: Salmonella (Typhoid, food poisoning), Shigella (dysentery), Vibrio (Cholera), Yersimia (Bubonic plague), Eshcerichia (vitamin)

Rickettsias and Chlamydias

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: Obligate parasties in host cells of insects, other animals

Characteristics: Intracellular parasites (leaky cell walls and/or membranes unable to produce ATP, NAD or other essential metabolites); many pathogens, louse and tick vectors

Representatives: Rickettsia (Typhus, rocky mtn. spotted fever), Chlamydia (psittacosis)

Mycoplasmas

(eubacteria)

Main Habiats: obligate parasites in host cells of plants and animals

Characteristics: intracellular parsites (no cell walls)

Representatives: pleuropneumonia like organisms in animals, stunt in plants, atypical pneumonia in man

Gram-positive cocci

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: soil; skin and mucous membranes of animals

Characteristics: some major pathogens

Represenetatives: Staphylococcus (boils), Streptococcus (sore throat)

Endospore-forming rods and cocci

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: soil, animal gut

Characteristics: Some major pathogens

Representatives: Bacillus, Clostridium (botulism, tetanus)

Gram-positive nosporulating rods

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: Fermenting plants, animal material, human oral cavity, gut, vaginal tract

Characteristics: some important in dairy industry, others serious contaminators of milk, cheese

Representatives: lactobacillus (yogurt, cheese), Listeria

Actinomycetes

(eubacteria)

Main Habitats: soil; some aquatic habitats

Characteristics: mold-like, no sexual stage, septate hyphae break into individual cells; include anaerobes and strict aerobes; major producers of antibiotics; frankia species fix nitrogen in symbiosis with alder, bitterbrush, bayberry; some pathogens

Representatives: Actinomyces (Frankia), Streptomyces (antibiotics). Mycobacterium (tuberculosis)

Zoomastigina

(mastigophora, flagellates)

Prominent Characteristics: most primitive protists; use flagella to move; heterotrophic

Common Members: Giardia, Trypanosomes

Significance: intestinal parsite, common human parsites that cause Afrcian sleeping sickness, and Chagas disease, termites

Sarcodina

(Sarcodines)

Prominenet Characteristics: move like amoebas witht he help of pseudopodia; some enclosed in limestone shells (CaCO3 shells); fresh water environments

Common Members: Foraminiferans, Radiolarians

Significance: make limestone depostis from calcium shells; amoebic dysentery

Apicomplexia

(sporozoa)

Prominenet Characteristics: nonmotile (not capable of movement); live as parsites inside other organisms, complex life cycle

Common Members: Plasmodium

Significance: Cases malaria

Ciliophora

(ciliates)

Prominent Characteristics: use cilia to move and to sweep food particles into mouth; have anal pores that discharge wastes; contain vacuoles filled with enzymes that digest food; fresh water environment

Common Members; Paramecium, Didinium

Significance: Feed on bacteria in ponds, hunter of other protists

Euglenophyta

(Euglena)

Prominent Characteristics: photosynthetic, have flagella and eyespot that allows the cell to swim toward light; common in eutrophic lakes and polluted waters; fresh water environments

Common Members: Euglena

Significance: Combine plant and animal characteristics

Pyrrophyta

(Dinoflagellates)

Prominent Characteristics: Have flagella in groove; photosynthetic; some wear a coat of cellulose armor, bioluminescent, salt water environments

Common Members: Gymnodinium

Significance: Case of red tide; phophorescence in tropical oceans, as phytoplankton important in food chain

Chrysophyta

(golden-brown algae and diatoms)

Prominent Characteristics: Have carotenoids; photosynthetic; enclosed in glass shells or calcium carbonate (limestone) shells; have amoeboid traits

Common Members: Dinobryon, Pinnularia, coccolithophorids

Significance: feed on bacteria; those with glass shells used in toothpaste, silver polish, etc., as phytoplankton important in food chain

Rhodophyta

(red algae)

Aquatic plant

Examples: irish moss, nori

Characteristics: Chlorophyll A; stores starch-like polymer, no flagellated cells, unicellular or multicellular, most marine but some freshwater and some terrestrial

Phaeophyta

(brown algae)

Aquatic plant

Examples: fucus, giant kelp

Characterisitics: Chlorophylls A and E, store carbohydrates and lipids, all multicellular some very large, almost all marine

Chlorophyta

(green algae)

Aquatic plant

Examples: spirogyra, ulothrix, ulva

Characteristics: Chlorophylls A and B, store starch, unicellular to multicellular, mostly freshwater, some marine and some terrestrial

Bryophyta

(mosses, liverworts)

Nonvascular plants

Characteristics: small, nonvascular, anchored by rhizoids, gametophyte dominant, flagellated sperm require water to reach egg, mostly moist habitats

Lyeophyta

(club mosses, ground pines)

Lower vascular plant

Characteristics: small, but some tree-like fossil forms, scale-like leaves with single vein

Sphenophyta

(hosetails)

Lower vascular plant

Characterisitics: most short, some tree-like fossil and tropical forms, jointed stems with vertical ribs, tiny single-veined leaves around joints

Pterophyta

(ferns)

Lower Vascular Plants

Characteristics: most short, some tropical tree-like forms, large many-veined leaves often with divided shapes (fronds)

Cycadophyta

(cycads)

Gymnosperms

Characteristics: palm-like shrubs and small trees, tropical and subtropical, pollen and seeds born in cones

Gnetophyta

(gnetum, ephedra, welwitschia)

Gymnosperm

Characteristics: desert plants with similarities in structure of vascular tissue

Ginkgophyta

(ginkgo)

Gymnosperm

Characteristics: tree with broad fan-shaped leaves, smooth naked seeds, sexes separate

Coniferophyta

(Conifers)

Gymnosperm

Characteristics: shrubs and trees with needle or scale-like leaves, most produce pollen and seeds in cones

Anthrophyta

(flowering plants)

Angiosperm

Characteristics: tiny to huge, efficient vascular tissue. Most with broad leaves. Flowers containing sexual reproductive parts, pollen carried by wind or animals, double fertilization, dispersal by seeds which develop inside fruits