There are different modes of locomotion in Protista. It includes pseudopodial, flagellar, ciliary, wriggling and mucilage propulsion.
Pseudopodial Locomotion: It is of the slow, creeping type of motion. Pseudopodia play an important role in it. They are further divided into lobopodia, filopodia, axopodia and reticulopodia. Filopodia are thread like structures made up of ectoplasm. Lobopodia are broad with blunt ends. Axopodia are lengthy and rigid while reticulopodia are long and branching.
Flagellar Locomotion: They have a sharp movement. They are not dependent and have their own line of movement.
Ciliary Locomotion: In this movement occurs by cilia. They show dependent and coordinated movement. It is classified as isochronic means cilia they work simultaneously and metachronic means cilia beat in succession one after the other.
Wriggling Locomotion: It is slow wave like movement which shows phases of contraction and expansion which are synonym with crest and trough phases of wave.
Mucilage Propulsion: Some of the species of protists do not have any organelle for locomotion. They secrete mucin and move from one location to the other.
Most of the protists show aerobic mode of respiration. They are the free living. However, some of their parasitic forms show anaerobic type of nutrition.
Protists have no fixed mode of nutrition. They show almost every mode of nutrition as discusses in the previous chapter. Autotrophic, heterotrophic, saprobic, parasitic, mixotrophic, symbiotic and pinocytosis are the modes of nutrition. Out of all these modes pinocytosis is the new mode of nutrition. It absorbs all soluble organic salts.
