The members of the Protist Kingdom are a varied bunch. If it's a eukaryote, a living thing whose cells have a nucleus, but it isn't a plant, animal, or fungus, it gets put into this category. Traditionally, Kingdom Protista has been divided into "plant-like protists," which make their own food through photosynthesis, "animal-like protists," who move and pursue their food, and "fungus-like protists," with cell walls containing a substance called chitin. There's a lot of overlap though, and creatures like Euglena, which moves like an animal and photosythesizes like a plant, have been causing classification headaches for taxonomists since the 19th century.

Major Phyla (groups)	Description	Masks	Approx. # of species
Heterokontophyta	This plant-like protist phylum includes the "brown algaes" or "golden algaes" as well as the diatoms. Members of this phylum make their own food from sunlight using photosynthesis. Kelp, a type of brown algae, can grow up to 80 metres long; but diatoms are single-celled, with cell walls made from silica, a kind of natural glass. They come in all kinds of beautiful glittering shapes. Under the microscope, diatoms look pretty stunning!		10,500
Chlorophyta	This phylum, known as the "green algae," includes green seaweeds, pond weeds, and the icky mats that float on top of ponds. Their green color comes from chlorophyll and, like plants, they use it to make food from sunlight by photosynthesis. Some of them are single-celled (unicellular) and some of them are made of lots of cells (multicellular). Most live in the water, but you might also have seen slimy coatings of green algae on rocks, buildings, or the trunks of trees. One type grows inside the hollow hairs of polar bears, giving them a greenish sheen!		16,000
Foraminifera	Foramineferans are single-celled animal-like protists who build pretty shells out of calcium carbonate. They have pseudopods like an amoeba which they use to move, anchor themselves, and capture their food. Most of them live in the sea, but a few species inhabit freshwater and damp rainforest soil.		275,000
Euglenophyta	Euglenids are microscopic, single-celled protists. They're a bit like animals, since they've also got flagella can move around. On the other hand, they have chloroplasts and can carry out photosynthesis like a plant. Back when there were only two kingdoms to choose from, plants and animals, biologists couldn't figure out where to put them. Arguments over where the Euglenids belonged eventually led to the creation of the Kingdom Protista.		1,600
Dinoflagellata	The dinoflagellates are single-celled protists that live in water, mostly in the sea. Lots of them are photosynthetic— they can make their own food from sunlight— and they're are an important part of the mix of creatures which make up plankton. They move around using flagella, whip-like structures, which make them spin as they move along. This is how they got their name: dinos, in Greek, means "whirling." When certain types of Dinoflagellates' populations get out of control, they can cause "red tides," which turn the sea red and make most shellfish poisonous to humans.		4,000
Amoebozoa	This group includes amoebas, and a bunch of other things that are amoeba-like. Most of them are single-celled and move using pseudopods, extensions which ooze out of their bodies. Lots of them also use pseudopods to hunt for food, such as bacteria, algae, and pretty much anything else smaller than they are.		200
Apicomplexa	The members of this phylum are single-celled, and they don't tend to have any way of moving on their own. Lots of them live inside other organisms. An infamous example is the genus Plasmodium, which can live in the guts of mosquitos or the blood of animals like humans, birds, or rodents. If a mosquito infected with these protists bites you, they can get into your bloodstream and cause malaria. Malaria is a serious disease— it kills as many as three million people a year.		5,000
Ciliophora	These are the ciliates. They are single-celled animal-like protists that move using cilia, special hair-like structures on the outside of their bodies. They live in fresh and salt water, as well as in the soil. One of the most famous members of this phylum is the paramecium; you can usually find a few of these if you look at pond water under a microscope.		5,000
Rhodophyta	The "red algaes" are mostly multicellular and live in the sea— they're seaweed. Lots of edible seaweeds fall into this category including nori, the seaweed used to wrap Japanese sushi.		4,000
Myxomycota	These fungus-like protists are the slime moulds, which are pretty... well, slimy. Like fungi, you'd tend to find them growing on rotting plant and animal matter. In fact, for years they were classified as part of Kingdom Fungi. Nowadays they often get classed as part of Phylum Amoebozoa, but we like slime moulds, so we're keeping Myxomycota for now.		12,000