Amorphea Temporal range: EarlyEctasian -Present,1400–0 Ma Pha. Proterozoic Archean Had.
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Clade:	Amorphea Adlet al., 2012[1]
Subgroups
Obazoa Breviatea Apusomonadida Opisthokonts Holomycota Holozoa Amoebozoa
Synonyms
Unikontanom. nud.[2] OpimodaDerelle et al., 2015[3]

Amorphea^[1] is a taxonomicsupergroup that includes the basalAmoebozoa andObazoa. That latter contains theOpisthokonta, which includes theFungi,Animals and the Choanomonada, orChoanoflagellates. Thetaxonomic affinities of the members of thisclade were originally described and proposed byThomas Cavalier-Smith in 2002.^[2][4]

The International Society of Protistologists, the recognised body for taxonomy of protozoa, recommended in 2012 that the term Unikont be changed to Amorphea because the name "Unikont" is based on a hypothesizedsynapomorphy that the ISOP authors and other scientists later rejected.^[1][5]

It includesamoebozoa,opisthokonts,^[6][7] andApusomonada.^[8]

Thomas Cavalier-Smith proposed two new phyla:Sulcozoa, which consists of the subphylaApusozoa (Apusomonadida andBreviatea), andVarisulca, which includes the subphylaDiphyllatea,Discocelida,Mantamonadidae,Planomonadida andRigifilida.^[9]

Further work by Cavalier-Smith showed that Sulcozoa isparaphyletic.^[10] Apusozoa also appears to be paraphyletic.Varisulca has been redefined to include planomonads,Mantamonas andCollodictyon. A new taxon has been created -Glissodiscea - for the planomonads andMantamonas. Again, the validity of this revised taxonomy awaits confirmation.

Amoebozoa seems to be monophyletic with two major branches:Conosa andLobosa. Conosa is divided into the aerobic infraphylumSemiconosia (Mycetozoa andVariosea) and secondarily anaerobicArchamoebae. Lobosa consists entirely of non-flagellated lobose amoebae and has been divided into two classes:Discosea, which have flattened cells, andTubulinea, which has predominantly tube-shaped pseudopodia.^[11]

The group includeseukaryotic cells that, for the most part, have a single emergentflagellum, or are amoebae with no flagella. The unikonts includeopisthokonts (animals,fungi, and related forms) andAmoebozoa. By contrast, other well-known eukaryotic groups, which more often have two emergent flagella (although there are many exceptions), are often referred to asbikonts. Bikonts includeArchaeplastida (plants and relatives) andSAR supergroup, theCryptista,Haptista,Telonemia andpicozoa.

One view of the great kingdoms and their stem groups.^{[12][13][14][15]} TheMetamonada are hard to place, being sister possibly toDiscoba or toMalawimonada^[15] or being a paraphyletic group external toall other eukaryotes.^[16]

The unikonts have a triple-gene fusion that is lacking in the bikonts. The three genes that arefused together in the unikonts, but not bacteria or bikonts, encode enzymes for synthesis of thepyrimidinenucleotides:carbamoyl phosphate synthase,dihydroorotase,aspartate carbamoyltransferase. This must have involved a double fusion, a rare pair of events, supporting the shared ancestry of Opisthokonta and Amoebozoa.

Cavalier-Smith^[2] originally proposed that unikonts ancestrally had a single flagellum and singlebasal body. This is unlikely, however, as flagellated opisthokonts, as well as some flagellated Amoebozoa, includingBreviata, actually have two basal bodies, as in typical 'bikonts' (even though only one is flagellated in most unikonts). This paired arrangement can also be seen in the organization ofcentrioles in typical animal cells. In spite of the name of the group, the common ancestor of all 'unikonts' was probably a cell with two basal bodies.

Wikispecies has information related toUnikonta.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toUnikonta.

• "Eukaryotes". Tree of Life.org

• Amorphea
• Eukaryote unranked clades

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with 'species' microformats
• Commons category link is locally defined
• Taxonbars with multiple manual Wikidata items
• Taxonbars without primary Wikidata taxon IDs