Just What I need

Looks like our dishwasher has sprung a leak. What a lovely time for that
to happen. With money already at a premium, this. Any rich uncles I
didn't know about who might be reading this, my Paypal address is
dogriver at o-g-t-s dot n-e-t (without the hyphens and the at-sign and
period used).

English Question

When I did my English poll sometime ago, several of you said your
English was "impeccable". Being only of the "better than most" species
myself, I thought I'd defer to those in the know, as I pose the
following question.

In this future New York Times bestseller I'm proofreading, we
read the following sentence:

Kingdom Protista is a diverse group of living things that contains
animal-like plantlike, and funguslike organisms.

Why is animal-like hyphenated, while plantlike and funguslike are not?
This is consistent in the text, so would not be a print error. I suppose
I could consult a dictionary and see which of the three words are or are
not in the dictionary, that might provide a clue. Anyway, o
impeccabiliacs out there, if you could answer my question, I would be
mildly grateful.