In the world of microbes, organisms like viruses and bacteria get a lot of attention. But now, researchers are beginning to study other unicellular life forms, like archaea, and protists. Protists ...

Polar freshwater environments represent oasis of life and hotspot of biodiversity in arid polar desert and in these freshwater habitats, cold temperature can be accompanied by freeze-thawing cycling, ...

Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least among people over 30. But the first study ...

A pile of dead wood, leaf litter and soil might look like garden waste to us. But to termites, it's a nutritious lunch. Termites are among the rare organisms that can feed on wood. This remarkable ...

Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: BSIP / UIG / Getty; Smith Collection / Gado / Getty. Conservationists pride themselves on protecting all of Earth’s life, not just the flashy ...

Not all of our genetic endowment has been passed down vertically, through ancestral lines. Some of it has been acquired horizontally, from “foreign” sources, such as bacteria, protists, and fungi. The ...

Mitochondria are very well known as the powerhouses of the cell. Generally speaking, all eukaryotes, including plants, fungi, and animals, are made of cells that contain mitochondria. These organelles ...

The most common groups of soil protists behave exactly like Pac-Man: moving through the soil matrix, gobbling up bacteria according to a new article. Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most ...