Protist both microbial eukaryotes and macroscopic organisms that do not fit into the other traditional kingdoms. In cladistic systems (classifications based on common ancestry), there are no equivalents to the taxa Protista or Protoctista, both terms referring to a paraphyletic group that spans the entire eukaryotic tree of life. In cladistic classification, the contents of Protista are distributed among various "supergroups" (SAR, such as protozoa and some algae, Archaeplastida, such as land plants and some algae, Excavata, which are a group of unicellular organisms, and Opisthokonta, such as animals and fungi, etc.). "Protista", <nowiki>"Protoctista"</nowiki> and "Protozoa" are considered obsolete. However, the
Algae Horaninow (1843), Agassiz (1859), Wilson & Cassin (1864), in further classifications, the "algae" are seen as an artificial, polyphyletic group. Throughout the 20th century, most classifications treated the following groups as divisions or classes of algae: cyanophytes, rhodophytes, chrysophytes, xanthophytes, bacillariophytes, phaeophytes, pyrrhophytes (cryptophytes and dinophytes), euglenophytes, and chlorophytes. Later, many new groups were discovered (e.g., Bolidophyceae), and others were splintered from older groups: charophytes and glaucophytes (from chlorophytes), many heterokontophytes (e.g., synurophytes from chrysophytes, or eustigmatophytes from xanthophytes), haptophytes (from chrysophytes), and chlorarachniophytes (from xanthophytes). With the abandonment of plant-animal dichotomous classification, most groups of algae (sometimes all) were