Cell division in protists, as in plant and animal cells, is not a simple process, although it may superficially appear to be so. The typical mode of reproduction in most of the major protistan taxa is asexual binary fission. The body of an individual protist is simply pinched into two parts or halves; the “parental” body disappears and is replaced by a pair of offspring or daughter nuclei, although the latter may need to mature somewhat to be recognizable as members of the parental species. The length of time for completion of the process of binary fission varies among groups of organisms and with environmental conditions; generally it ranges from just a few hours in an optimal situation to many days under other circumstances. In some unicellular algal protists, reproduction occurs by fragmentation. Mitotic replications of the nuclear material presumably accompany or precede all divisions of the cytoplasm (cytokinesis) in protists.
