Kingom Chromista

The name Chromista means "colored", and although some

chromists, like mildews, are colorless, most are photosynthetic.
Even though they are photosynthetic, chromists are not at all
closely related to plants, or even to other algae. Unlike plants, the
Chromista have chlorophyll c, and do not store their energy in the
form of starch. Also, photosynthetic chromists often carry
various pigments in addition to chlorophyll, which are not found in
plants. It is these pigments which give them their characteristic
brown or golden color.

Photosynthetic chromists are some of the most important

organisms in aquatic ecosystems. The cool and temperate coasts
of continents are lined with kelp forests, where many commercially
important fish and shellfish feed and reproduce, and diatoms are
frequently the primary source of food for both marine and
fresh-water organisms.

In additional to their roles as producers for marine animals,

chromists provide many products for industry. Alginates are
viscous chemicals extracted from kelp; these are used in paper
production, toothpaste, and in ice cream, where the alginate helps
to improve texture and ensure uniform freezing and melting.
Ancient chromists, like coccolithophorids, are responsible for
deposits of limestone and other rock formations. The skeletons of
dead chromists accumulate on the floor of lakes and oceans, where
they may become thick deposits of silica or calcium carbonate.
These deposits are useful for interpreting ancient climate, and in
searching for oil.

Chromista: Fossil Record

In rocks of late Precambrian age, "carbon film" fossils have been
found that are basically just blackened compressions in the rock.
Some are featureless and probably represent bacterial mats, but a
few have a stalk and seem to represent some sort of seaweed-like
algae, possibly brown algae (phaeophytes). Phaeophytes may go
back to the Ordovician but are not common as fossils before
the Miocene.

Chromists that secrete skeletons of silica or calcium carbonate are

much more common as fossils; some, like diatoms,
coccolithophorids, and silicoflagellates, may form extensive rock
formations out of their accumulated fossil skeletons. A few
problematic fossils that may be silica-secreting chromists have
been described from the late Precambrian, but the oldest definite
diatoms are late Jurassic in age; coccolithophorids also extend
back to at least the Jurassic, while chrysophytes and
silicoflagellates date back to the Cretaceous, and most other
chromists have very poor fossil records that do not predate the
Cretaceous. In the Cenozoic fossil record, fossils of siliceous
chromists such as diatoms and chrysophytes may be abundant in
freshwater deposits and may be crucial for reconstructing
paleoenvironments and for paleolimnology.

Chromista: Life History and Ecology

Members of the Chromista are almost all aquatic organisms. These
may occur, however, in both freshwater and marine environments.
The Phaeophyta, for example, are primarily known for their large
marine kelps, but the group also includes microscopic freshwater
species. Likewise the diatoms have many marine and freshwater
groups.

Chromists make their living in the aquatic enviroment in several

ways. Many are planktonic like the diatoms and Sargassum,
floating free near the water surface, and being carried along by the
surface currents. Other chromists, such as the large kelps, are
attached to the bottom of the ocean, but are so incredibly large that
they may reach to the surface, and form kelp forests in the ocean.

Important Chromists : On the left, a living diatom; millions of

these microscopic chromists inhabit the world's oceans and are an
important source of food for marine life. On the right, several
"sea-palms" (Postelsia). Despite the vast difference in size, both
chromists are important as aquatic vegetation and both have
similar chemistry.

Many chromist groups are photosynthetic, using

colorful pigments to capture the energy of sunlight to fuel the
manufacture of food. Because of this, chromists are often the most
important primary producers in aquatic ecosystems, forming the
base on which the food chain is built. Diatoms and
coccolithophores particularly are important sources of food for
small aquatic predators. Some of the chromists are
non-photosynthetic, and so must obtain their food from living or
decaying matter. The Oomycota may be found growing as fluffy
white parasites on the scales of fish.
Many chromists rely on silica to construct a rigid skeleton around
their cells. These silica skeletons are formed by deposition of
minerals within the Golgi apparatus. Some chromists are quite
efficient at extracting the silica they need from the surrounding
water, and are capable of quickly depleting dissolved silica --
cultured diatoms raised in glass containers will weaken the
container walls! Because some planktonic diatoms may divide up to
eight times per day, there is a constant need for more silica. As the
diatoms die, they sink to the ocean floor, becoming a thick ooze of
decomposing matter, and eventually giving rise to deposits of the
sediment called diatomaceous earth. Other chromists, like
the coccolithophores, produce skeletons of calcium carbonate, in
much the same way. Deposits of their skeletons produced much of
the Mesozoic chalk and limestone.

Chromista: Systematics
Move deeper into the systematics of chromist groups by selecting
one of the boxes containing a picture!

For many years, photosynthetic chromists were classified as plants,

while non-photosynthetic chromists were classified with the fungi or
animals. The close relationship among chromists was not fully
appreciated until the rise of ultrastructural and molecular studies.
For instance, it is now known that chlorophyll "c" and a number of
other pigments found in the Chromista are not found in any plant
group, but occur in a number of photosynthetic chromist taxa.
There are also peculiarities of the flagella, plastids, and genetic
arrangement which are not found in any other group.

The Chromista appear to represent an independent evolutionary

line that diverged from the same common ancestor as plants, fungi,
and animals. It was for this reason that the new
kingdom Chromista was proposed. The precise relationship of the
chromists to the other eukaryotes is not yet known, but they appear
to be part of the so-called "crown eukaryotes", which includes not
only plants, animals, and fungi, but also Alveolates and posiibly
the red algae. There is some evidence that the Haptophyta may
not belong to the Chromista. They lack several of the morphological
and molecular characters common to this group, but we have
included them here since no alternative relationships have been
suggested.

There is still not full agreement as to how the chromist taxa are
interrelated. The cladogram shown here is a composite of the
results of molecular and morphological studies (see list of sources
below). Our phylogeny is something of an oversimplification: we
have excluded a number of taxa that have no fossil record and are
not diverse, common, or well studied. We have also retained
the Chrysophyta as a group, even though it is now generally
believed that it is a paraphyletic, or possibly polyphyletic, group.

There is also considerable variation in the application of names to

this group and the vaious subgroups in the literature. The group,
which we here call the Chromista, is sometimes
called Stramenopiles, Heterokonta, and Chromobionta, among
others. Each of these terms has at times been used for a more
restricted group however, so we follow Cavalier-Smith (1997) in
using the term Chromista.

Chromist systematics is an area of intense and active research. It is

quite likely that new research will greatly add to, or even modify, the
relationships depicted in the cladogram above.
 Chromista: More on Morphology
What makes a chromist a chromist?
Tubular mastigonemes. In other
words, most chromists, at some
stage of their life cycles, have two
eukaryote-type flagella, or
undulipodia, one of which is
covered with tubular hairs
branching from it, and a second
flagellum without these hairs. Both
flagella are attached to one side of
the cell, rather than to the "front" or
"back" end of the cell. Even
multicellular chromists, like brown
algae and water molds, produce
flagellated zoospores of this type.

Many chromists are photosynthetic;

those that are have a particular form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll c,
which is not found in most other photosynthetic organisms. Most
also contain carotenoid pigments, such as the brown
pigment fucoxanthin, that give the cells a yellow, orange, or brown
color. Food manufactured by these organisms may be stored for
reserve energy in the form of the oil leucosin or the
polysaccharide laminarin; chromists do not manufacture starch as
plants do. The chroroplast and nucleus are typically surrounded by
a common membrane; the chloroplast contains a light- sensitive
"eyespot" of pigment granules, the stigma. The diagram of a
simple chromist shown here shows the location of these features.

A third character that a number of chromists have in common is the

manufacture of silica or calcium carbonate skeletons of various
shapes from their Golgi apparatus, although not all chromists can
do this. Those that can form silica skeletons, such as
the diatoms and silicoflagellates, or skeletons of calcium carbonate,
such as the coccolithophorids, may be extremely abundant in the
fossil record. Many of the chromists which do not deposit skeletons
surround their cells with a wall of cellulosic compounds, which
gives the organism strucutre and rigidity, while remaining flexible.
Chromistans have evolved multicellularity independently
of plants and animals. Basal chromists are primarily single-celled
throughout their life history. Several groups, including diatoms and
cryophytes, have species that live colonially; several cells live
together, but each function an a separate entity. Many oomycetes
live as filamentous networks of cells, giving them a fungal-like
appearance. The most complex anatomy among chromists,
however, is that of the large kelps. Many kelps have specialized
tissue regions that differentiate from surrounding cells, even
producing a kind of conductive tissue in a few species.