American ecologist Robert Whittaker created a five-kingdom model that accounted for prokaryote and eukaryote distinctions. In this schemata, all prokaryotes were placed in the kingdom Monera. The remaining eukaryotes were separated by differences mostly in structure. Plants and animals were easily separated into their own kingdoms. It was decided that because fungi were neither plant nor animal but subsisted by decaying or decomposing once-living matter, they also become their own kingdom. Everything else was clumped into the kingdom Protista. The protists included all eukaryotes that did not clearly fit into the plant, animals, or fungi kingdoms. With the advent of sophisticated collecting and microscopy techniques, the question arose as to where the “new” types of bacteria belong