Basidiomycota is one of two large divisions that, together with the Ascomycota, constitute the subkingdom Dikarya within the kingdom Fungi. Members are known as basidiomycetes. More specifically, Basidiomycota includes these groups: agarics, puffballs, stinkhorns, bracket fungi, other polypores, jelly fungi, boletes, chanterelles, earth stars, smuts, bunts, rusts, mirror yeasts, and Cryptococcus, the human pathogenic yeast.
Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The defining feature of this fungal group is the "ascus", a microscopic sexual structure in which nonmotile spores, called ascospores, are formed. However, some species of Ascomycota are asexual and thus do not form asci or ascospores. Familiar examples of sac fungi include morels, truffles, brewers' and bakers' yeast, dead man's fingers, and cup fungi. The fungal symbionts in the majority of lichens such as Cladonia belong to the Ascomycota.
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa. They were thought to have appeared as early as the mid-late Ordovician period as an adaptation of early land plants.
An ascocarp, or ascoma, is the fruiting body (sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. Ascocarps are most commonly bowl-shaped (apothecia) but may take on a spherical or flask-like form that has a pore opening to release spores (perithecia) or no opening (cleistothecia).
In biology, a biological life cycle is a series of stages of the life of an organism, that begins as a zygote, often in an egg, and concludes as an adult that reproduces, producing an offspring in the form of a new zygote which then itself goes through the same series of stages, the process repeating in a cyclic fashion.
Neurospora crassa is a type of red bread mold of the phylum Ascomycota. The genus name, meaning 'nerve spore' in Greek, refers to the characteristic striations on the spores. The first published account of this fungus was from an infestation of French bakeries in 1843.
Sordaria fimicola is a species of microscopic fungus. It is commonly found in the feces of herbivores. Sordaria fimicola is often used in introductory biology and mycology labs because it is easy to grow on nutrient agar in dish cultures. The genus Sordaria, closely related to Neurospora and Podospora, is a member of the large class Sordariomycetes, or flask-fungi. The natural habitat of the three species of Sordaria that have been the principal subjects in genetic studies is dung of herbivorous animals. The species S. fimicola is common and worldwide in distribution. The species of Sordaria are similar morphologically, producing black perithecia containing asci with eight dark ascospores in a linear arrangement. These species share a number of characteristics that are advantageous for genetic studies. They all have a short life cycle, usually 7–12 days, and are easily grown in culture. Most species are self-fertile and each strain is isogenic. All kinds of mutants are easily induced and readily obtainable with particular ascospore color mutants. These visual mutants aid in tetrad analysis, especially in analysis of intragenic recombination.
Heterothallic species have sexes that reside in different individuals. The term is applied particularly to distinguish heterothallic fungi, which require two compatible partners to produce sexual spores, from homothallic ones, which are capable of sexual reproduction from a single organism.
A heterokaryon is a multinucleate cell that contains genetically different nuclei. Heterokaryotic and heterokaryosis are derived terms. This is a special type of syncytium. This can occur naturally, such as in the mycelium of fungi during sexual reproduction, or artificially as formed by the experimental fusion of two genetically different cells, as e.g., in hybridoma technology.
Saccharomycotina is a subdivision (subphylum) of the division (phylum) Ascomycota in the kingdom Fungi. It comprises most of the ascomycete yeasts. The members of Saccharomycotina reproduce by budding and they do not produce ascocarps.
Fungi are a diverse group of organisms that employ a huge variety of reproductive strategies, ranging from fully asexual to almost exclusively sexual species. Most species can reproduce both sexually and asexually, alternating between haploid and diploid forms. This contrasts with most multicellular eukaryotes such as mammals, where the adults are usually diploid and produce haploid gametes which combine to form the next generation. In fungi, both haploid and diploid forms can reproduce – haploid individuals can undergo asexual reproduction while diploid forms can produce gametes that combine to give rise to the next generation.
Erysiphales are an order of ascomycete fungi. The order contains one family, Erysiphaceae. Many of them cause plant diseases called powdery mildew.
This is a glossary of some of the terms used in phytopathology.
Sporogenesis is the production of spores in biology. The term is also used to refer to the process of reproduction via spores. Reproductive spores were found to be formed in eukaryotic organisms, such as plants, algae and fungi, during their normal reproductive life cycle. Dormant spores are formed, for example by certain fungi and algae, primarily in response to unfavorable growing conditions. Most eukaryotic spores are haploid and form through cell division, though some types are diploid sor dikaryons and form through cell fusion.we can also say this type of reproduction as single pollination
A crozier is an anatomical feature of many fungi in the phylum Ascomycota that forms at the base of asci and looks like a hook-topped shepherd’s staff or stylized religious crosier. Croziers resemble and function similarly to clamp connections on the dikaryotic hyphae of Basidiomycota.
Xylaria polymorpha, commonly known as dead man's fingers, is a cosmopolitan saprobic fungus. It is characterized by its elongated upright, clavate, or strap-like stromata poking up through the ground, much like fingers.
The tetrad is the four spores produced after meiosis of a yeast or other Ascomycota, Chlamydomonas or other alga, or a plant. After parent haploids mate, they produce diploids. Under appropriate environmental conditions, diploids sporulate and undergo meiosis. The meiotic products, spores, remain packaged in the parental cell body to produce the tetrad.
Brachymeiosis was a hypothesized irregularity in the sexual reproduction of ascomycete fungi, a variant of meiosis following an "extra" karyogamy step. The hypothesized process would have transformed four diploid nuclei into eight haploid ones. The current scientific consensus is that brachymeiosis does not occur in any fungi.
Ascodesmis nigricans is a coprophilous fungus that could be isolated from the dung of various animals. It was firstly introduced by Philippe Édouard Léon Van Tieghem, a French botanist, and was the type species of the genus Ascodesmis. It is an uncommon species but its development of the fruit body has been the subject of much laboratory study due to the easy nature of its cultivation. Ascodesmis nigricans is not pathogenic to human, animals or plants. This species has world-wide distribution.
This glossary of mycology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to mycology, the study of fungi. Terms in common with other fields, if repeated here, generally focus on their mycology-specific meaning. Related terms can be found in glossary of biology and glossary of botany, among others. List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names and Botanical Latin may also be relevant, although some prefixes and suffixes very common in mycology are repeated here for clarity.
