Two kingdoms of living forms, Plantae and Animalia, have been recognized since Aristotle, in the 4th century

bc, established the first taxonomy. In their way of life and evolutionary path, rooted plants are so distinct from mobile, food-ingesting animals that the concept of the two kingdoms remained intact until recently. Only in the 19th century, long after it was revealed that one-celled organisms could not fit comfortably into either of the two categories, was it proposed that unicellular forms be placed in a third kingdom, the Protoctista. Furthermore, long after photosynthesis was discovered to be the basic nutritional mode of plants, the fungi, which feed by absorption, continued to be classified as plants because of their apparently rooted manner of growth. As techniques for examining the cell have improved dramatically, it has become clear that the major division in the living world is not that between plants and animals but between organisms whose cells have no enclosed nucleus and organisms whose cells have nuclei bound by membranes. The former are called prokaryotes (before kernels) and the latter eukaryotes (true kernels). Prokaryotic cells are also lacking in organellesmitochondria, chloroplasts, advanced flagella, and other special cell structuresat least some of which occur in all eukaryotic cells. The bacteria and blue-green algae are prokaryotic cells, and they have been recognized in modern taxonomies as a fourth kingdom, Prokaryota. Fungi form the fifth kingdom. Eukaryotic cells arose much later and may have evolved as symbiotic associations of prokaryotes. The kingdom Protoctista is composed of diverse one-celled organisms, either free-living or colony-forming. Each of the multicellular kingdoms is believed to have arisen more than once from protoctist ancestors. The kingdom Animalia comprises organisms that are multicellular, have their cells organized into different tissues, are mobile or partly mobile by means of contractile tissues, and digest food internally. The kingdom Plantae is made up of multicellular organisms that usually have walled cells and that contain chloroplasts in which they produce their own food by photosynthesis. The fifth kingdom, Fungi, comprises multicellular or multinucleate organisms that digest food externally and absorb it through the surfaces of protoplasmic tubes called hyphae (of which their bodies are composed). This five-kingdom classification of the living world is thus based on three levels of organization: the primitive prokaryotic; the relatively simple and primarily unicellular eukaryotic; and the complex, multicellular eukaryotic. Within the last of these levels, the three major directions of evolution are each based on a different kind of nutrition and are expressed in the different kinds of tissue organization that are characteristic of animals, plants, and fungi.