Membrifera

Membrifera is a clade of eukaryotic microbes. Alongside the Provora, it forms one of the two clades within the supergroup Disparia. The name is a Latin adjective meaning 'limb-bearing', derived from membrum, meaning 'limb', and the suffix -fer, meaning 'bearer'. This alludes to the arms, tails, and protruding stalks that characterize members of this clade.^[1]

Membrifera
Illustration of Hemimastix amphikineta, a hemimastigophoran
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Clade:	Disparia
Clade:	Membrifera Valt & Čepička, 2025
Phyla
Caelestes Hemimastigophora

Taxonomy

Morphology of Solarion arienae, a member of Caelestes

In their 2025 description of the membriferan 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 clade Membrifera was recovered as the sister taxon to the Provora (lit. 'devouring voracious protists')—a group described in 2022 based on the recognition of several new taxa^[2]—together comprising the broader supergroup Disparia. Membrifera contains two phyla, Hemimastigophora and Caelestes. Using an 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]

Eukaryota	Opimoda ⊞ Malawimonadida Ancyromonadida Podiata CRuMs Amoebozoa Obazoa ⊟ Diphoda Discoba Metamonada Diaphoretickes Archaeplastida Pancryptista Haptista Telonemia SAR Disparia Provora Nebulidia Nibbleridia Membrifera Caelestes ⊞ Meteora sporadica Solarion arienae ⊟ Hemimastigophora ⊞ Hemimastix kukwesjijk Spironema multiciliatum ⊟