The Story of the Three Domains In the beginning there were two kingdoms recognized throughout the land.

These kingdoms were vast and mighty. They were multicellular organisms, heterotrophs and the ability to live on both land and water and they were known as PLANTS AND ANIMALS! Time carried on until one day an unusual single celled organism came onto the scene that was not like plants or animals yet resembled both. This organism was so unique it was decided that it should be granted its own kingdom which they called PROTISTA!! The protista as mentioned shared many features with the original two kingdoms such as its ability to reproduce sexually or asexually, and its ability to obtain food and energy as an autotrophs, heterotrophs or both yet as mentioned its single celled characteristic made it so unique that it was granted its own kingdom However shortly after the introduction of the kingdom protista it was noted that certain microorganisms within this kingdom didnt belong. They seemed unique in their own right sharing their own set of distinct features such as lacking a true nucleus and so it was decided that these organisms should too be given their own kingdom which they called MONERA but became well known as PROKARYOTES! Life was good in the Kingdoms until one day a group of mushrooms and moulds were talking and determined that they too wanted their own kingdom. I mean after all as one mushroom put it sure we are multicellular like the plants and have cell walls but we are not autotrophs we are heterotrophs and we have distinct looking features, we want our own kingdom. And so it was given and the mushrooms, moulds and yeast were granted the kingdom FUNGI!!! At this point Scientists Robert Whittaker officially formed the 5 kingdom system of Plantae, Animalia, protista, monera and fungi and everyone was happy for a good long while. That was until microbiologist Carl Woese and other researchers came along in the 1970s and conducted studies on a group of bacteria known as Arachbacteria and raised the flag stating that these prokaryotic organisms were very different from bacteria and other monerans. They found that these bacteria unlike bacteria known as eubacteria did not have a peptidoglycan in their cell wall and frankly they were tougher, way tougher than any other bacteria in this kingdom and could live in the most extremes of conditions like hot springs and salt lakes and even inside animal guts and so Carl Woese and his colleagues proposed that they replace monera with 2 distinguishing kingdoms of bacteria which they would call Eubacteria more commonly known as TRUE BACTERIA and ARACHBACTERIA!!! And so finally the six kingdoms were formed and consisted of: animalia, plantae, protista, fungi, eubacteria and archbacteria! And everyone was happy.. For now!!!