 Throughout the 20th Century researchers encountered "Syndinium" species in a range of copepod and radiolarian in marine habitats ranging from the Clyde Sea to Port Phillip Bay, Australia.In the 2000s, "Syndinium" is given renewed attention from protist researchers thanks to the maturation of metagenomics techniques such as environmental sequencing, bypassing the need to capture and culture.In 2001 rRNA amplification marine plankton samples led to the tentative establishment of group I and group II marine alveolates, two novel lineages that have not yet been cultivated in the laboratory.