Talk:Multicellular organism

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Contents 1 Headline text 2 Paraphylic? 3 Evolutionary Origin? 4 "Most life that can be seen with the naked eye is multicellular..."

[edit] Headline text

multicellular organisms

i think that wikipedia should have more information and useful examples in their website. as this is a website about studies (eg. science) it is meant for students. mainly students visit this site to help them with their homework or projects -like me. similarly, i wolud suggest you put in information that is not found in the text book as extra input to help us too. i came to this site to look for examples of multicellular organisms (rare ones) but only to find an article about organisms in general. though i do like the format and way this website is functions except for the fact that there is not much useful information. this is just an advise, thanks anyway for having this page and being open to suggestions.

sorry, i have to agree cb

[edit] Paraphylic?

Is "Multicellular organism" a paraphylic or monophylic? I would guess paraphylic, but I don't know. After all, no Procaryotes are multicellular and all plants, animals, and fungi are multicellular, so it really depends on the protists.

I think you're right about their paraphylic nature. As regards multicellularity, I thought that some prokaryotes formed "colonies" or chains, but that's not quite multicellular.

Are all plants and animals multicellular??? I though also many single celled algea are plants and there are also single celled animals? Or is my knowledge dated and have they been ousted from this definition?

The short answer may be "no". Depends how one defines plants and animals. If you include protists and algae, then many plants/animals are unicellular. Algae provide a particularly salient example, since they range fully from single cells to complex multicellular forms. I hope this answers your question somewhat. --Plumbago 10:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolutionary Origin?

I'd like to see discussion of how, when, etc multicellularity is postulated to have evolved.

[edit] "Most life that can be seen with the naked eye is multicellular..."

Is this a mistake in the opening paragraph, or are there actually known species of single-celled organisms with the single cell being that huge? --71.225.92.16 22:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

yeah. see Thiomargarita namibiensis or Caulerpa.--Vojtech.dostal (talk) 18:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)