Genome skimming of some representative taxa in peritrichous ciliates (Protista, Ciliophora) based on single-cell sequencing data, with notes on their phylogeny and systematic relationship Raw sequence reads

Ciliates are widely spread in almost all aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide, even in digestive systems of animals. peritrichs are representatives of this wide adaptability and variability among ciliates, featured by a wide variety of different ecological niches (symbiotic and epibiontic, marine and freshwater living) and morphological features (loricate, colony and contractive stalk). Although peritrichs and mobilids are the two major groups of the class Peritrichia, whether they share a common ancestry in near evolutionary history has long been under debate.