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Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity

Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny org...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Keeling, Patrick J., Eglit, Yana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10662721/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37988341
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395
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author Keeling, Patrick J.
Eglit, Yana
author_facet Keeling, Patrick J.
Eglit, Yana
author_sort Keeling, Patrick J.
collection PubMed
description Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny organisms are like is abstract, and we lack tools that would help to describe them. In this Essay, we present a series of openly available technical diagrams that illustrate the diverse range of complex body plans of microbial eukaryotes (or “protists”), as well as an illustrated tree to show the vast diversity they encompass and how they are related to the more familiar macroscopic animals, fungi, and plants. These sorts of tools are desperately needed for teaching and communication about the microbial world, which is a pressingly important problem where much improvement is needed.
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spelling pubmed-106627212023-11-21 Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity Keeling, Patrick J. Eglit, Yana PLoS Biol Essay Microbial life maintains nearly all the support systems that keep the Earth habitable, yet the diversity of this vast microbial world is greatly understudied, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Even what we do know is difficult to communicate broadly because an intuitive grasp of what these tiny organisms are like is abstract, and we lack tools that would help to describe them. In this Essay, we present a series of openly available technical diagrams that illustrate the diverse range of complex body plans of microbial eukaryotes (or “protists”), as well as an illustrated tree to show the vast diversity they encompass and how they are related to the more familiar macroscopic animals, fungi, and plants. These sorts of tools are desperately needed for teaching and communication about the microbial world, which is a pressingly important problem where much improvement is needed. Public Library of Science 2023-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10662721/ /pubmed/37988341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395 Text en © 2023 Keeling, Eglit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Essay
Keeling, Patrick J.
Eglit, Yana
Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title_full Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title_fullStr Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title_full_unstemmed Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title_short Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
title_sort openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity
topic Essay
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10662721/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37988341
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002395
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