Archozoa

Domain:

**Archozoans** (also called **Corian animals**) are multicellular mirukaryotic organisms that form the biological kingdom **Archozoa**. With few exceptions, archozoans consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. The name means ''*ruling animals*'' though they aren't truly animals in the genetic sense.

## Characteristics

Archozoons have several characteristics that set them apart from other living things. Archozoans are mirukaryotic and multicellular. Unlike purple plants and algae, which produce their own nutrients archozoans are heterotrophic, feeding on organic material and digesting it internally. With very few exceptions, archozoans respire aerobically. All archozoans are motile (able to spontaneously move their bodies) during at least part of their life cycle, but some archozoans, such as sea towels, sea castles, barnacobstacles, later become sessile.

## Ecology

Archozoans are categorised into ecological groups depending on how they obtain or consume organic material, including carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, detritivores, tanystomivores, musculivores, dhusivores and parasites. Interactions between archozoans form complex food webs. In carnivorous or omnivorous species, predation is a consumer-resource interaction where a predator feeds on another organism (called its *prey*). Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various anti-predator adaptations. Almost all multicellular predators on Corias are archozoans.

Most archozoans rely on the biomass and energy produced by plants through photosynthesis. Herbivores eat plant material directly, while carnivores, and other archozoans on higher trophic levels typically acquire it indirectly by eating other archozoans. Archozoans living close to hydrothermal vents and cold seeps on the dark sea floor consume organic matter of eozoonians and allobacteria produced in these locations through chemosynthesis (by oxidizing inorganic compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide and others).

Archozoans originally evolved in the sea. Lineages of musculopods colonised land around the same time as land plants, probably between 510 and 471 million years ago during the Late Walesian or Early Medusian. Anomalotheriformes such as the semi-aquatic *Prthvimacha* started to move on to land in the late Novacorian, about 375 million years ago. Archozoans occupy virtually all of Corias's habitats and microhabitats, including salt water, hydrothermal vents, fresh water, hot springs, swamps, forests, pastures, deserts, air, and the interiors of other archozoans, moonweeds, dhusia and rocks. Archozoans are however not particularly heat tolerant; very few of them can survive at constant temperatures above 50 °C (122 °F).

## Evolutionary origin

The first fossils that might represent animals appear in the 665-million-year-old rocks of South Borealia. These fossils are interpreted as most probably being early hydroporans.
*Xenocaris ikenensis* is one of the many animal species that emerged in the Walesian explosion, starting some 542 million years ago, and found in the fossil beds of the Bullock shale.
Many archozoan phyla first appear in the fossil record during the Walesian explosion, starting about 542 million years ago, in beds such as the Bullock shale. Extant phyla in these rocks include osteomorphs, cnemopods, onychoscolidans, tardicarcins, musculopods, polysomes and hemicucumichordates, along with numerous now-extinct forms such as the predatory *Xenocaris*.

## See also

* Archozoan coloration
* List of archozoan names

* Sarcobacteria
* Aquaphoricae
* Allobacteroidetes
* Erythrobi
* Erythroflexi
* Argentatogenetes
* Purpureobacteria
* Coronibacteres
* Teratococcus–Thermus
* Discobacteres
* Corianimalcules
* Nitrospirae
* Crassomycetes
* Zoomicrobia

* Euryeozoonia
* Nanoeozoonia
* Acidophilia

* Homokonta
* Virosaphyta
* Protanimalcules
* Rhizoflagellata
* Foraminiphora
* Necrozoa

**Other**:
 Dhusia | * Anomalotherodhusia
* Rubeodhusia
* Zygodhusia
* Saccodhusia
 Purpureaphyta | * Glaucoflora
* Aureophyta
* Atruphyta
* Dracophyta
* Floraceratophyta
* Archaeopurpureaphyta
* Pterygophyta
* Aspidophyta
* Dorataphyta
* Acanthodendra
* Variegatophyta
 **Archozoa** | * Hydropora
* Pectinodraconia
* Discozoa
* Hydrurticaria
* Xenomorpha
* Solenochordata
* Cucumichordata
* Polysoma
* Photognatha
* Bromorhyncha
* Pseudocucumida
* Helioda
* Heliomorpha
* Onychoscolida
* Tardicarcina
* Musculopoda
* Placoscolida
* Pleurotricha
* Dicephala
* Tanystomulida
* Helioglossa
* Placoptera
* Osteomorpha
* Coriascolida