Current taxonomic status of the eukaryotic microbes

Establishing relationships within the different members of the fungi, chlorophyta, and protistan microbes relies on studying characters, which are features or attributes of an individual organism that can be used to compare it with another organism. These features can be morphological, anatomical, ultrastructural, biochemical or based on sequences of nucleic acids. The objective of such a study is to create monophyletic groups that are assumed to have a single ancestor, usually extinct; a similar approach is used in the creation of classification systems for prokaryotes (Section B1). A cladistic approach would not assume features from an ancestor, but would merely define a monophyletic group on the basis of shared characters. New information based on the presence and type of mitochondria, and the DNA sequencing of ribosomal RNA, places the fungal, chlorophytan, and protistan members of the eukaryotic microbes into a complex phylogenetic tree.