Question

1. why do we need protists? what are some things that would happen if certain groups of protists went extinct? Be specific

2. list one disease caused by a protist. Provide the common name and scientific name of the organism, and briefly describe its life cycle. include the source for your information

Answer 1

Protists are the eukaryotic diverse organisms.
Some of the protists are very close to plants.
They are unicellular and highly organized.
They contain a nucleus and other specialized cellular organelles.
Protists offer many benefits. They are natural decomposers. They supply almost half oxygen on the planet through photosynthesis.
They recycle many nutrients and exist in a symbiotic relationship with many other microbes. They form a large component of the food chain.
Without protists, life on earth seems to be nearly impossible.
Nutrient cycles would be affected. Food chains are greatly disturbed.

sleeping sickness is caused by a protist known as Trypanosoma. It is a single-celled parasitic flagellate.
These trypanosomes require an obligatory host to complete their life cycle and are transmitted by the vector.
Specifically, African sleeping sickness is caused by Trypanosoma brucei.
This parasite is carried by the tsetse fly. The parasite undergoes several changes in the transition between the vector and the host. Infection occurs when tsetse bites host. once they enter host they enter the lymphatic system and they grow into long and slender forms and divide by binary fission. Now they enter blood vessels and enter extravascular tissues and cause infection.
The short trypomastigotes are taken up by tsetse fly when they bite hosts.
In the midgut of the fly, they become procyclic trypomastigotes and divide to become epimastigotes and enter salivary glands and gets attached to epithelium
where they undergo transformation to become stumpy infective metacyclic trypomastigotes. The cycle repeats.
Source: Wikipedia.