Viridiplantae

After creating 'chlorophyll b', you can use more of the light spectrum and grow faster.  You're still in the sea, but some of you happen to be in tidal areas where you dry out when the water goes away.

This is mostly acceptable - the benefits of lots of light are balanced by the damage done by drying out - except for your reproductive cells.  Currently, when you release new cell clusters which will grow into new plants - the earliest form of seeds - they sink to the bottom and grow in the ocean.

Now that you are invading tidal zones, they get thoroughly dried out and irradiated by ultra-violet light before the sea comes back.  This is enough to damage the important DNA inside them and prevent the new plants from growing.

If you want to hang out in the tidal zone, you'll need to keep the sun off them.

I like the dry, hot, tasty sun.  Protect my eggs.
I'm happy hanging out a few feet down.  Leave them bare.

Hacrobia

Hacrobia are tiny algae, divided into two main groups, the cryptomonads and haptophytes.

They spread throughout the world's oceans and fresh waters, and are hardly noticed at all, being some of the tiniest life forms on the planet.

They are, however, food for some of the largest lifeforms on the planet, where they are better known as part of the grouping called plankton.

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Brown Algae

Accidentally creating a molecule similar to chlorophyll a, but absorbing a slightly different part of the spectrum enables you to grow slightly bigger, and colonise deeper water.  It also turns you brown.  We call it 'chlorophyll c'.

The best known example of a brown algae is kelp.  Huge forests of the biggest variety, giant kelp, grow in the polar and temperate oceans, up to fifty metres long, growing over half a metre a day.  They provide the ocean equivalent of rainforest, with different species of animals living at different depths.

There is one odd thing about brown algae: there are no known single celled brown algae.  Nobody knows why (yet).

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Red Seaweeds

Without the size restriction of a shell, red algae can form larger plants, and spread throughout the ocean.

Many are widely spread, small (tens of centimeters long) , red seaweeds, but some grow much larger over substantial areas and have become human food crops.

In Japan, nori is used to make sushi and related products.  It has been eaten for centuries and farmed for at least three hundred years.

In Britain and Ireland, Dulse and Laver have been used to make local foodstuffs for generations.

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Algal Coral

Yep, that's right: even algae can grow a shell if the right chance mutations happen.  In seawater, there's a certain amount of dissolved calcium.  Algal coral luckily evolved a mechanism for fixing calcium to carbon and oxygen to express calcium carbonate.

On any patch of exposed rock in shallow water, there's likely to be thin layer of crusty, reddish, stuff. That's an algae, hiding inside a shell.

It doesn't make huge reefs, like polyp coral, but given enough time, it probably would.  Two utterly different species, kingdoms apart, have evolved exactly the same mechanism to solve the same problem.

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Red algae

Chance mutations cause a useful chemical to be expressed by your genes: Phycobilin.

It doesn't have the sugar-creating part of chlorophyll, but both of them are chromophores (light capturing chemicals).  If a phycobilin is attached to chlorophyll by a phycobiliprotein, then light from a much larger part of the spectrum can be used.  In fact, green, yellow, orange and blue light can be used, leaving only red to be reflected.  That's very efficient, and enables red algea to grow high in nutrients and proteins.

So high, in fact, that other animals find them very nutritious.  Oh.

You might want to get serious about protection.

Grow a shell?
Stay in the open?

Chromista

You, a non-synthesizing-chromista, consume a rhodophyte, and to everyone's surprise, it doesn't die, but you live happily ever after.  You provide the rhodophyte with chemicals, and it converts those, via sunlight, to sugar for you.  Marvellous.  It's a little engine living right inside you.

Well, almost.  The chlorophyll gained from the rhodophyte helps a lot, but it could still be improved.  For example, it doesn't work in deep water, where the sunlight is reduced.

Another of those little copy errors could make a different kind of chlorophyll that works better in the deep ocean and gives you the opportunity to colonise areas where nothing lives at the moment.  But that will mean having less of the tried-and-tested chlorophyll that works so well near the surface.

Call me Nemo
I like paddling

Chromista Chloroplast

You, a rhodophyte, are swimming around quite happily, living on the sugars made by the blue-green algae you ate earlier, when a non-photosynthesising chromista eats you.  Thankfully, you survive this trauma and live on, inside the chromista.

We're sure that this happened, because the chloroplasts in chromista have three or four membranes instead of two. This strongly suggests that a blue-green bacterium was 'eaten' by a rhodophyte, which was in turn 'eaten' by a chromista.

You get given chemicals, and convert those, via sunlight, to sugar for the Chromista.  Marvellous.

Well, almost.  The chlorophyll you provide helps the team a lot, but it could still be improved.  For example, it doesn't work in deep water, where the sunlight is reduced.

Another of those little copy errors could make a different kind of chlorophyll that works better in the deep ocean and gives you the opportunity to colonise areas where nothing lives at the moment.  But that will mean having less of the tried-and-tested chlorophyll that works so well near the surface.

Call me Nemo
I like paddling

Rhodophyta

Hmm.  That may not have been such a good choice. Chlorophyll a is just not good enough on its own.  You're going to need help.

You can either improve your chlorophyll's effect, or get help from a friend.

Archaeplastidia

You eat a photosynthesising bacterium.  It’s tasty food.  However, over time, you have found that allowing the photosynthesising bacteria to live for a little while inside you makes them even better, as they can continue photosynthesising and making sugars inside you.

In fact, you have evolved to provide the chemicals the photosynthesising bacteria needs as food to extends its life inside you and maximise your meal

This adaptation has now reached the point where you can contain multiple photosynthesising bacteria and they can live on inside you indefinitely.

You have entered a symbiotic relationship, and will come to rely on your guest, providing food and protection, for the price of a few sugars.

Your guest photosynthesises using a chemical called 'chlorophyll a', which turns you a blue-green colour and gives you a supply of sugars all the time you are in sunlight.  It doesn't absorb all the sunlight though - only a part - the rest is wasted.

The usual copy-error effect - inside the guest living inside you - can give you the ability to make a slightly different version of chlorophyll which will work using a different part of the sunlight spectrum, but it means you'll make less of chlorophyll a.  Interested?

I'll go with two.
The one I have is just fine.

Multicellular Fungi

When single celled fungi began to work together, they must have evolved some means to pass food along from cell to cell, which enabled some cells to specialise in food intake, and others in micronutrients (for example).

Eventually something interesting happens: different parts of an organism appear, as individual genes are turned off in some parts and turned on in others.

We see, for the first time, structures of cells making up a single life form.  Parts grow and specialise depending on what other parts are already present, and what is around them.

Typically all this activity, for multicellular fungi, happens out of sight, as they consume dead matter from other sources, until eventually they have enough stored energy to reproduce.  Only then do they grow the most specialised cells of all, the spores, hanging down from a fruiting body which we recognise as mushrooms and toadstools.

Over time, the energy and nutrient rich spores become a target for other, larger creatures, and defences are found in the form of toxic compounds.  Some of these are mildy irritating, and will make a mammal sick.  Some will kill.  Some will affect the brain and cause visions.

Some become the basis of religions such as shamanism and the religions of the North American Indians and Alaskans.

You've come a long way: even humans worship you!

Oh... and one more thing.  Something interesting happens for some of you if you come in contact with green algae.  Want to give it a try?

Unicellular Fungi

Unicellular Fungi comprise a group of organisms of which the best known are the yeasts and penicillins.

There is a huge number of varieties of yeasts, and they are found on almost any external surface of any fruiting plant.  When making cider, for example, there is no need to add yeast as the crushed apples will have had yeasts on the surface.

Penicillins are part of a family of blue-green fungi.  They also grow everywhere, aided by their ability to kill bacteria which are trying to compete with them for food.

Both have been adapted for use by humans, providing us with our daily bread, and our best defence against infection.

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Fungi

That's working nicely.  Whenever you find a food source, you grow into it, bit by bit, eventually growing big enough that you split in two.

Do you and your new friend want to work together, or work apart?

Opisthokonts

Swimming around, looking for food, big tough Opisthokonts are becoming the John Wayne of the unicellular world.  There's not as many of them as there are bacteria, but they live longer.

(This next decision is a little arbitrary, because biologists aren't really sure yet what caused the speciation)

Will you ingest your food - pull lumps right into you - or will you absorb molecules directly through the cell wall?  To put it another way, will you pull your food into you, or will you grow into your food?

I'll stuff my face.
Ill rub my face in it.

Cyanobacteria

Free-living, quickly-reproducing, sunlight-eating cells rapidly become one of the most successful lifeforms on the planet.  They invade every niche, and are responsible for one of the first non-physics-driven forms of climate change: they reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hugely, and cause the extinction of many oxygen-intolerant early forms of life.

They are first clearly present around 2.5 billion years ago, and survive to the present day in great quantities in many locations, from the blue-green algae which blooms on the Mediterranean to the camouflaging bacteria which turns sloths fur dark green.

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Cabozoa

You're pretty tough, and you can eat what you find and look after yourself.  As time passes, and the soup dries up, you develop into a set of different unicellular species, many of which are parasites living in the guts or blood of animals.

You cause a host of problems, including sleeping sickness and Chagas disease.  Thanks a lot.  In many species, the arrival of the insects helped you out enormously as they became blood-suckers, because they transport you from host to host.

You survive into the present day, but only as long as the creatures you live on or in are around.

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Corticata

Life is good inside your new tougher cortex.  You swim around, eating things smaller than you.  But some of the things you eat have got big enough and tough enough to survive inside you, if they're lucky.  It could be to your advantage to have something living inside you, if it isn't in competition with your current chemistry.  If it is, of course, you'll probably die.

One thing that clearly isn't in competition with you is a green/blue photosynthesising bacterium.  It eats light and makes simple sugars.  If you took in one of those, it could share the sugar with you, and you could keep it safe from other predators.  Win-win.

The other choice is a rhodophyte, a primitive form of red algae.  It doesn't make sugar, so it's not quite as rich a meal, but it makes a lot of other things of use.

Green!
Red!

Amoebozoa

You are a member of the amoebozoa phylum.  You reached this exalted position about a billion years ago, and have carried on till today.  Some of you are well known, such as the slime mould family, or the amoeba proteus with its visible pseudopodia.

All of you have single cells, and can take on 'dry' forms when conditions are not good.  Some of you (slime moulds) create specialised sub-copies of yourself already in dry form, called spores.  These are used similarly to seeds, in the hope of eventually arriving somewhere better.

Some of you enjoy living in the guts of animal from time to time, which makes them pretty ill.  All in all, a good spread of approaches ensures that this group will survive for a long time yet.

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Unikonts

Sticking with one flagellum is a safe bet.  More might enable more complicated movements, but will cost more.  Anyway, now you've made the choice and been successful, it's really hard to change it back unless you or your environment changes in such a way that it would be even better.  It does happen sometimes, but rarely, and only when it becomes advantageous.  That's evolution for you.

At a microscopic scale, water is pretty viscous.  You can pull yourself through it like helicopter blades, or push through like a boat's propellor. Trying to keep the ability to do both won't be as successful as choosing one.

Will your flagellum pull or push?

Bikonts

You are one of the biggest toughest lifeforms around at the moment.  But sometimes, you're still just food. You're just a little single cell bag of takeaway proteins to a bigger bikont.

It's getting tougher out there...maybe you need to toughen up?  Would like to grow a cell cortex?

Cortex me up.
Keep me slim.