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 the phylum formed two major groups, Group 1 and 2, including "T. subtilis" and "T. antarcticum" respectively, and that these were further sub-divided into several statistically supported clades of sequences with restricted geographic distribution. Species of Telonemia are heterotrophic predators, feeding on a wide range of bacteria and pico- to nano-sized phytoplankton. Chloroplasts have not been observed in any of the investigated species. By using specific PCR primers, they revealed a much larger diversity of Telonemia from environmental samples than previously uncovered by eukaryote-wide primers. They are globally distributed in marine waters and are  frequently encountered in environmental clone libraries. The evolutionary origin of Telonemia was inferred from phylogenetic reconstruction of single- and concatenated sequences obtained from both cultured strains and environmental clones. Pawlowski identifies it as a micro-kingdom. It is considered sister of the SAR group. Species. Although only two species have been described formally, DNA sequences collected from seawater suggest there are many more species which have not yet been described. History. The genus "Telonema" was described in 1913 by Griessmann.