Talk:Opisthokont

message: This page should say how many species are in the phylum. --Savant13 20:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Number of Species

message: Photosynthetic plants are the primary producers of the fixed carbon compounds that virtually all  animals eat.  Therefore, in some strict sense of the word parasite, all non-photosynthetic organisms are parasites of photosynthetic organisms.  Photosynthetic organisms are parasites of the sun's energy.   Further discussion belongs under thermodynamics, or under semantics of the word "parasite".  (However some bacteria grow using mineral substrates thereby creating biomass that is not of photosynthetic origin.  I believe that non-photosynthetic biomass is not a significant proportion of the photosynthetic biomass but I do not know of an estimate of the rate or abundance of non-photosynthetic biomass.)
Note also that fungi are not the ancestors of animals; animals and fungi are thought to have a common ancestor.
Twbeals31 16:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because there are organisms that make their own food without sunlight, the best term to use here would be autotrophs. Autotrophs are all organisms that make their own food. (Auto=self troph=nourish) I'm also unsure of how significant a presence non-photosynthetic autotrophs have, but they do exist, so simply saying "photosynthetic organisms" limits accuracy. Also, would decomposers classify as parasites? They don't make their own food, but they aren't feeding off of another living organism. Just a thought. --Joanna 14:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're going to stretch the word parasite to include predators, how about stretching it even further? What about creatures who do create their own food, but need other creatures for reproduction for instance? Seriously though, the normal definition requires a prolonged and intimite relationship between the organisms. So *chomp chomp* ‘nice knowing you, it was worth every second, all five of them’ doesn't quite count. Shinobu (talk) 10:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: yes, parasites

message: The "Flagella" section explains that whether the flagellum/flagella are posterior or anterior is a determining factor in this classification. However, how do you determine posterior or anterior on a single cell? A brief explanation about this would improve the article IMHO. Krellkraver (talk) 01:12, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: One usage is related to the direction of movement caused by the flagellum: is movement away from the flagellum (it acts like a boat propeller) – then the flagellum is posterior; or towards it (it acts like helicopter blades) – then the flagellum is anterior. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:22, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Posterior vs. Anterior - Just Curious 

message: As written, the text implied that the monophyly of the opisthokonta was only supported by "some" studies whereas it is very robustly supported and widely accepted.  The questions raised by Philip et al. in 2005 were quickly answered, and most researchers working on the eukaryote tree (including the many authors of "The Revised Classification of Eukaryotes," Adl et al, 2012) accept the group as a clade.  The findings of Philip et al. were, as Huang puts it, likely due to "intrinsic limitations in the data", resulting from the fact that it was "based on few taxa only and included genes with conflicting evolutionary histories." (Huang et al., 2005)  Parfrey et al. found opisthokonta robustly supported.  See also Steenkamp et al., 2006 and  Torruella et al, 2012.Deuterostome (talk) 18:40, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monophyly of Opisthokonta 

message: Shall we bump up the temporal range to 975 Ma? The page for Holozoa has 975 Ma as its start of the temporal range, and Holozoa is part of the opisthokonts, yet the page for Opisthokonts has 632 Ma as its start of the temporal range (correct me for any grammatical errors, by the way). Even more, kingdom Animalia has 670 Ma as its start, so wouldn't it make sense to make the start of the Opisthokonts as 975 Ma?
:All of these temporal ranges in taxoboxes should be based on reliable sources in the article, so if there's such a source, then, yes, increase the temporal range. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:24, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Currently looking for a good source that supports a date of ~1300 mya for first appearance of Opisthokonta in temporal range. Current taxobox has oldest fossil as 632 ma as sourced, but average of all molecular clock analyses in same source estimates 1389-1240 ma. Cladogram in article dates Opisthokonta to 1300 ma, but other editors have added, or suggested, various unsourced figures (975, 1000, 1100, 1481, 2200 ma). Loopy30 (talk) 17:46, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  We can't have editors adding unsourced dates to any articles. There have been a few IPs about who have attempted to change whole batches of articles to their unsourced dates. Any dates we provide must be from good secondary sources per WP:SCIRS. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporal Range