choanoflagellate
choanoflagellate noun: any of a group of flagellate protozoa, of the class Choanoflagellatea, thought to be the closest unicellular ancestors of animals.
Noun
choanoflagellate (plural choanoflagellates)
- Any of a group of flagellate protozoa, of the class Choanoflagellatea, thought to be the closest unicellular ancestors of animals.
- Choanoflagellates are plankton: tiny protozoans that feed on even tinier bacteria.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 30
- Detailed studies showed that the sponge and the cells of a protist called a choanoflagellate used a different set of genes and proteins to build similar-looking structures.2017 August 1, Douglas Fox, “Aliens in our midst”, in Aeon, archived from the original on 26 May 2019
- Synonyms:
- craspedophyte
Synonyms of choanoflagellate
Forms of choanoflagellate
| plural | choanoflagellates |
|---|
Origin of choanoflagellate
From choano- + flagellate.
Questions about choanoflagellate
- What does choanoflagellate mean?
- Choanoflagellate means any of a group of flagellate protozoa, of the class Choanoflagellatea, thought to be the closest unicellular ancestors of animals.
- What part of speech is choanoflagellate?
- Choanoflagellate is a noun.
- What is the plural of choanoflagellate?
- The plural of choanoflagellate is choanoflagellates.
Words near choanoflagellate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: choanoflagellate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “choanoflagellate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/choanoflagellate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.