Disparia

Disparia (lit. 'disparate') is a supergroup of eukaryotic microbes. It represents one of the five primary clades within Diaphoretickes, although its exact position in this group is unclear. While this clade of protists is not particularly species-rich compared to other supergroups, the species within it are particularly diverse.^[1]

The 'derived' position of these taxa may indicate that there are still many disparians yet to be found, as they are obscured within the rare biosphere and environments that have not been extensively sampled. Disparians are likely most common in surface pelagic regions, but not abyssal zones.^[1]

Taxonomical note: The cladistic definition for the same clade as Disparia with the synonym Promethea was provided by a different research group:^[2]

Promethea Zlatogursky, Boscaro, and Keeling 2025: The least inclusive clade containing Ancoracysta twista Janouškovec, Tikhonenkov, Burki, Howe, Rohwer, Mylnikov & Keeling 2017, Hemimastix kukwesjijk Eglit & Simpson 2018, and Meteora sporadica Hausmann, Weitere, Wolf & Arndt 2002, but not Telonema subtile Griessman 1913, Paramecium aurelia Ehrenberg 1838, or Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynhold 1842. The name refers to the initial letters of the three known lineages at the time of establishment (PROvorans, METeorids, and HEmimastigophorans) and to the mythological titan Prometheus, as a nod to the fact that the last common ancestor of the clade is likely to be extremely ancient.

In their 2025 description of the disparian Solarion arienae, Valt and colleagues used phylogenomic analyses to determine its relationships and affinities with other 'protists'. The researchers formulated a dataset comprising 87 taxa representing the known diversity of eukaryotic organisms, based on 240 protein-coding genes and 77,133 amino acid sites. The novel supergroup Disparia comprises Provora (lit. 'devouring voracious protists')—a group described in 2022 based on the recognition of several new taxa^[3]—as the sister taxon to the new clade Membrifera (lit. 'limb-bearing'). Based on this analysis, both subclades contain two phyla, Nebulidia + Nibbleridia in the former and Hemimastigophora + Caelestes in the latter. While these relationships are well-supported, the placement of Disparia within Diaphoretickes varies based on what model or dataset is used in the analyses. Using a ELM+C60+G4 model, which excels in predicting sites where rapid evolution occurs, a maximum-likelihood tree was created, recreated in the cladogram below:^[1]