Kingdom Fungi

Kingdom Fungi:

Fungi are eukaryotic organisms who acquire their source of energy from other organism (heterotrophs). Their cell walls are made up with chitins, but, unlike animal fungi, do not ingest food. Instead, they digest food outside their bodies and then absorb it. Many fungi feed by absorbing nutrients from decaying organisms in the soil. Many of them also live as parasites, absorbing nutrients from the bodies of their hosts. Fungi are composed by tiny filaments called hypae, structures that might contain one or two nucleus. The bodies of multicellular fungi are composed of many hypae joined together into a thick mass called mycelium. Most fungi reproduce both sexually and asexually. There are four groups of Fungi: Zygomycota, Ascomicota, Basidiomycota, and Deuteromicota.

There is something that characterizes Zygomycetes, which is that they contain zygospore, a resting spore that contains zygotes formed during the sexual phase of the organisms.

Unlike other fungi, some organisms from the phylum Ascomicota are large enough to be visible when they grow above the ground. They are very unique for their reproductive structure, sexual spores that are found in sac-like structures called an ascus. Ascus are formed within the fruiting body.

Basidiomycota are very unique for their specialized reproductive structure that resembles a club. The reproductive spores are called basidium. Basidia are found on the gills that grow on the underside of mushroom caps. Club fungi are the mushrooms, puffballs, and shelf fungi. All the organisms part of the phylum Basidiomycota are really important forest decomposers.

Many of the fungi are classified by their sexual phase in their life cycle. Organisms on the phylum Deuteromicota are those organisms that are not placed in any other phyla because researchers have never been able to observe their sexual phase, because they don’t have a sexual phase.