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
Bacteria a molecular signal is called quorum sensing, which serves the purpose of determining whether there is a local population density that is sufficiently high that it is productive to invest in processes that are only successful if large numbers of similar organisms behave similarly, as in excreting digestive enzymes or emitting light. Quorum sensing allows bacteria to coordinate gene expression, and enables them to produce, release and detect autoinducers or pheromones which accumulate with the growth in cell population. Classification seeks to describe the diversity of bacterial species by naming and grouping organisms based on similarities. Bacteria can be classified