A tiny single-celled organism with a collar-like structure around its flagellum (whip-like tail), found in water environments.
From choana (funnel) + flagellate (having a flagellum), coined in the 19th century by zoologists who observed the distinctive funnel-shaped collar arrangement.
Choanoflagellates are basically your ultra-distant cousins—recent genetic studies suggest they're more closely related to animals than to other protists, and sponge cells look almost identical to them, making them a window into how you evolved!
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