Candidate division

Okay kiddo, so you know how there are lots of different types of living things, like dogs, cats, birds, and plants? Well, scientists have found out that there are even smaller living things inside these bigger ones called cells.

Sometimes, these cells can be really different from other cells and they might even be so different that scientists think they might be a completely new type of living thing!

This is called "candidate division" and it means that these cells could potentially be a whole new type of living organism that we haven't discovered yet.

Scientists study these cells very carefully to see if they are actually a new kind of living thing, or maybe just a strange type of cell from an already-known organism. It's like trying to decide if a creature is a new kind of animal or just a different kind of dog.

So, candidate division is basically when scientists find a strange new cell and wonder if it could be a whole new type of living thing that we haven't seen before.