Toad Tuesday

About fungi

Fungi are important organisms and so distinct from plants and animals that they have been allotted a 'kingdom' of their own in our classifications of life on earth.

Fungi v fungi

First, let’s be clear: fungi and Fungi mean different things. The lower case 'fungi' is a general word that refers to organisms that all look and act the same, but are not all related. This group is artificial and includes moulds, yeasts, mushrooms, slime moulds, and water moulds (likePhytophthora, the cause of the Irish potato famine and Sudden Oak Death).

On the other hand, 'Fungi', with a capital 'F', refers to the evolutionary group that includes most of the best known 'fungi': moulds, yeasts, and mushrooms, but not slime moulds or water moulds.

Because all of these organisms superficially resemble each other and all do similar things, they were grouped together within the lower plants, including mosses, liverworts, and ferns, for a very long time.

Fungi are not plants

Well, at least since 1969 when they were first officially recognized as a distinct group. And more recently, using DNA sequences and comparisons of cell structure, we have learned that Fungi are in fact more closely related to animals than they are to plants. Superficially, they remind us more of plants than animals because they don’t move, but scratch the biological surface just a little and that’s just about the only thing they have in common.

Click here to read the rest of the article.