∞ generated and posted on 2022.01.23 ∞
Eukaryotic chemoheterotrophs that employ extracellular enzymes to digest the food they live on or inside of.
| Members of Kingdom Fungi – including macrofungi, molds, yeasts, and chytrids – obtain organic carbon and energy from other, often dead organisms, as do also animals as well as many bacteria, but are distinct from these other organisms, and certainly distinct from plants and algae, which instead generate their own energy and fix their own carbon. |
Fungi possess cell walls, which are based on chitin, a carbohydrate (contrast animals which lack cell walls). Fungi also tend to disperse using spores which, depending on the fungus as well as circumstances, can be sexually or asexually produced (meiosis and mitosis, respectively).
Different fungi can be multicellular or unicellular, where the latter we call yeasts. Rather than a more primitive form of fungi, being a yeast seems to be a derived characteristic of fungi, that is, yeasts seem to have been evolvedfrom multicellular fungi rather than the other way around.
Terms associated with Kingdom Fungi include:
Budding yeast, Candida, Candida albicans, Coenocytic hyphae, Conidia (conidiospore, conidium), Cutaneous mycosis, Dimorphic fungi, Fission yeast, Fleshy fungi, Hyphae, Karyogamy, Mold, Mycelia, Mycology, Mycorrhizae, Plasmogamy, Pseudohyphae, Saccharomyces, Septate hyphae, Septum, Subcutaneous mycoses, Superficial mycoses, Systemic mycoses, Yeast, Yeast infection
Additional relevant terms include:
Saprophyte, Septum, Spore