To Sally Warring, protists are an absolutely underrated type of wildlife.
“Protists are very charismatic and interesting,” says Warring, who studies these creatures at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, England. Among this richly diverse group of mostly single-celled eukaryotes (creatures whose DNA is packed in a nucleus), some are hunters and others prey. Some live in colonies, others alone. Some even have mating rituals or build themselves tiny structures to live in.
“There’s all this stuff going on that we usually associate with more complex animals,” Warring says. “It’s just not as well-studied because it’s harder to study.”
Warring’s research investigates the genetic blueprints, or genomes, of protists. “From the genomes, we can get information about what these organisms are and how they live — what they need to eat … if they secrete things into the environment, that kind of information,” Warring says. That could help explore more than the largely uncharted biodiversity of protists. It could put more familiar types of life into better context, too.
“Protists make up most of eukaryotic diversity,” Warring says. “So if we want to understand how different eukaryotic groups evolved — including animals, plants, fungi and important parasites — then we need to understand what’s going on in protists.”
In this interview, Warring shares reflections on her experiences with Science News Explores. (This interview has been edited for content and readability.)
What sparked your interest in protists?
During my undergrad, I randomly took a course on protists, and I just was blown away. We got to look at different protists through the microscopes, and I got to see organisms such as Volvox and Paramecium and amoebas.
I’d never thought about these organisms before. I didn’t know anything about them. And I couldn’t believe how much complexity and behavior and lifestyle was…
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