#fedivolve You settle into one of the cells with the little hairs on their flagella, and there you shall stay. what remains of your vestigial nucleus vanishes over time. all that remains is your choloroplast, surrounded by four membranes, keeping what was once your own outer membrane as well as her own. fragments of your genes have ended up in the host cell’s genome. you are one. you are now the host cell, indistinguishable. you are a stramenopile.

domain: eukarya
(unranked): bikonta
(unranked): diaphoretickes
(unranked): TSAR
(unranked): SAR
(unranked): halvaria
phylum: stramenopiles

you are a unicellular organism, a eukaryote with a nucleus, with chloroplasts bound by four membranes, able to make a variety of red and green pigments. you swim with the aid of your two flagella, one long and one short, gripping the water expertly with the tiny little hairs covering your flagella. until recently you were a heterotroph, but now with your new plastid you are starting to transition to an autotrophic lifestyle. or are you?

some of your sisters are finding the chloroplasts more trouble than they’re worth and getting rid of them.

will you stick with photosynthesis or abandon it, stramenopile?