Chromalveolata in the context of "Thomas Cavalier-Smith"

SAR is a highly diverse clade of eukaryotes, often considered a supergroup, that includes stramenopiles (heterokonts), alveolates, and rhizarians. It is a node-based taxon (under the Sar name), including all descendants of the three groups' last common ancestor, and comprises most of the now-rejected Chromalveolata. Their sister group might be telonemids, with which they would make up the TSAR (sometimes called T-SAR) clade, but this grouping has been challenged. Harosa is used synonymously with TSAR by Cavalier-Smith in 2022.

Chromista is a proposed but controversial biological kingdom, refined from the Chromalveolata, consisting of single-celled and multicellular eukaryotic species that share similar features in their photosynthetic organelles (plastids). It includes all eukaryotes whose plastids contain chlorophyll c and are surrounded by four membranes. If the ancestor already possessed chloroplasts derived by endosymbiosis from red algae, all non-photosynthetic Chromista have secondarily lost the ability to photosynthesise. Its members might have arisen independently as separate evolutionary groups from the last eukaryotic common ancestor.

Chromista as a taxon was created by the British biologist Thomas Cavalier-Smith in 1981 to distinguish the stramenopiles, haptophytes, and cryptophytes. According to Cavalier-Smith, the kingdom originally consisted mostly of photosynthetic eukaryotes (algae), but he later brought many heterotrophs (protozoa) into the proposed group. As of 2022, the kingdom was nearly as diverse as the kingdoms Plantae and Animalia, consisting of nine phyla. Notable members include marine algae, potato blight, dinoflagellates, Paramecium, the brain parasite Toxoplasma, and the malarial parasite Plasmodium.