Protists are predators of bacteria, and they help shape soil communities by munching on bacteria (sorry, bacteria). Researchers knew that protists could identify prey when they were in direct contact ...

Among the large cast of microbiome players, bacteria have been hogging the spotlight. But the single-celled organisms known as protists are finally getting the starring role they deserve. Among the ...

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 ...

Since the Victorian era, categorizing the natural world has challenged scientists. No group has presented a challenge as tricky as the protists, the tiny, complex life forms that are neither plants ...

Being single-celled doesn’t necessarily doom a creature to a simple life. A fresh look at a long-dismissed, century-old experiment suggests that so-called primitive organisms can behave in ...

Oddly, origami could be useful for snagging prey. The finding could help inspire new robotics, such as tools for microsurgery that can extend and contract inside small body cavities. Seeing L. olor’s ...

Aim: General patterns of biodiversity, such as latitudinal gradients and species-area relationships, are found consistently in a wide range of organisms, but recent results for protist diversity ...

A new discovery challenges one of the strongest arguments in favor of the idea that animals with bilateral symmetry—those that, like us, have two halves that are roughly mirror images of each ...

A procedure has been developed for preparing living bacteria, quantitatively labeled with 3 H-thymidine and 14 C-leucine, for short-term grazing experiments. The negligible rate of accumulation in ...