Field of Science

ToE Expansion pack: Foraminifera!

After getting over my little moment of rage there, I decided to go ahead and redo the forams while I could still vaguely remember the phylogeny, sort of. So here comes the Tree of Eukaryotes Expansion Pack: Forams!

Edit 04.04.10: Note that the majority of forams are actually the paraphyletic allogromiids, which, I am told, are to forams as protists are to eukaryotes.

I hope somebody is happy now, after nagging me about the freaking forams for the past two weeks! I know they deserve more space, and I did them an awful injustice by shrinking the entire group to just 'Forams'. Since I still haven't figured out the space problem (should I just shrink everything to 8pt font and add another 100 taxa or so?), I decided to make a special little expansion pack by crudely offending the Radiolaria and Cercozoa. I'd add more images, but it's almost 3am so...later. Also, this tree is liable to be very wrong, so perhaps I don't really need to polish it up just yet. Some groups seemed a bit confusing...

Apparently it's unknown whether Komokians are forams or not, as no living specimen have been recovered (damn suckers insist on living at the very bottom of the ocean), and it's uncertain whether they even have reticulopodia, although presumably they should. Komokians are so awesome...!

No time to finish the Sunday Protist to'night', but I totally just spoiled the surprise. Yes, it'll be a foram. And yes, it will be weird.


Flakowski, J. (2005). ACTIN PHYLOGENY OF FORAMINIFERA The Journal of Foraminiferal Research, 35 (2), 93-102 DOI: 10.2113/35.2.93

HABURA, A., GOLDSTEIN, S., PARFREY, L., & BOWSER, S. (2006). Phylogeny and Ultrastructure of Miliammina fusca: Evidence for Secondary Loss of Calcification in a Miliolid Foraminifer The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, 53 (3), 204-210 DOI: 10.1111/j.1550-7408.2006.00096.x

LONGET, D., & PAWLOWSKI, J. (2007). Higher-level phylogeny of Foraminifera inferred from the RNA polymerase II (RPB1) gene European Journal of Protistology, 43 (3), 171-177 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejop.2007.01.003

Pawlowski, J. (2003). The evolution of early Foraminifera Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100 (20), 11494-11498 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2035132100

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