While snorkeling in the ocean you find large, leafy organisms that are brownish in color growing in large masses. You are unsure whether they are protists since they look quite plant-like. If they are actually protists, what characteristic will the organism’s cells exhibit?

Question

wach · Answer

There are certainly a lot of characteristics for protists, so here's a link that should point you in the right direction - think in terms of the differences between plant and animal-esque cells :) http://www.buzzle.com/articles/protista-characteristics.html

anonymous · Answer

Ah, good old Heterokontophyta. I don't think the big leafy heterokonts are protists: they're not even remotely single-celled. They're not in Plantae either, mind you, and are actually more closely related to ciliates, dinoflagellates, and parasites like Plasmodium (which causes malaria), but given that you've got actual differentiated tissues with interconnected cells, they're not protists either. I'd be inclined to just call them "plants" (with the quotation marks to indicate that it is not a monophyletic group). These are probably the "plants" that the question is talking about, by the way: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Scuba_diver_in_kelp_forest.jpg