Marine life asexually by binary fission, fragmentation, or budding; unlike bacteria and eukaryotes, no known species forms spores. Archaea are particularly numerous in the oceans, and the archaea in plankton may be one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet. Archaea are a major part of Earth's life and may play roles in both the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle. Of eukaryotic groups, the protists are most commonly unicellular and microscopic. This is a highly diverse group of organisms that are not easy to classify. Several algae species are multicellular protists, and there are marine slime molds have
Telonemia Telonemia Telonemia is a phylum of microscopic eukaryote, single-celled organisms. They were formerly classified as protists until that kingdom fell out of general use, and are suggested to have evolutionary significance in being a possible transitional form between ecologically important heterotrophic and photosynthetic species among chromalveolates. One paper places them in the SAR supergroup. Phylogenomic analyses of 127 genes place Telonemia with Centroheliozoa in a group also consisting of cryptomonads and haptophytes (see Cryptomonads-haptophytes assemblage). Although they have been studied in primarily marine environments, they have also been found in freshwater. Shalchian-Tabrizi "et al" say that 18S rDNA sequences in