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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.
The Polyporales are an order of about 1800 species of fungi in the division Basidiomycota. The order includes some polypores as well as many corticioid fungi and a few agarics. Many species within the order are saprotrophic, most of them wood-rotters. Some genera, such as Ganoderma and Fomes, contain species that attack living tissues and then continue to degrade the wood of their dead hosts. Those of economic importance include several important pathogens of trees and a few species that cause damage by rotting structural timber. Some of the Polyporales are commercially cultivated and marketed for use as food items or in traditional Chinese medicine.
Jelly fungi are a paraphyletic group of several heterobasidiomycete fungal orders from different classes of the subphylum Agaricomycotina: Tremellales, Dacrymycetales, Auriculariales and Sebacinales. These fungi are so named because their foliose, irregularly branched fruiting body is, or appears to be, the consistency of jelly. Actually, many are somewhat rubbery and gelatinous. When dried, jelly fungi become hard and shriveled; when exposed to water, they return to their original form.
Heterobasidiomycetes, including jelly fungi, smuts and rusts, are basidiomycetes with septate basidia. This contrasts them to homobasidiomycetes, including most mushrooms and other Agaricomycetes, which have aseptate basidia. The division of all basidiomycetes between these two groups has been influential in fungal taxonomy, and is still used informally, but it is no longer the basis of formal classification. In modern taxonomy homobasidiomycetes roughly correspond to the monophyletic class Agaricomycetes, whereas heterobasidiomycetes are paraphyletic and as such correspond to various taxa from different taxonomic ranks, including the Basidiomycota other than Agaricomycetes and a few basal groups within Agaricomycetes.
The dikaryon is a nuclear feature that is unique to certain fungi. Compatible cell-types can fuse cytoplasms (plasmogamy). When this occurs, the two nuclei of two cells pair off and cohabit without fusing (karyogamy). This can be maintained for all the cells of the hyphae by synchronously dividing so that pairs are passed to newer cells. In the Ascomycota this attribute is most often found in the ascogenous hyphae and ascocarp while the bulk of the mycelium remains monokaryotic. In the Basidiomycota this is the dominant phase, with most Basidiomycota monokaryons weakly growing and short-lived.
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.
A clamp connection is a hook-like structure formed by growing hyphal cells of certain fungi. It is a characteristic feature of basidiomycete fungi. It is created to ensure that each cell, or segment of hypha separated by septa, receives a set of differing nuclei, which are obtained through mating of hyphae of differing sexual types. It is used to maintain genetic variation within the hypha much like the mechanisms found in croziers (hooks) during the sexual reproduction of ascomycetes.
The Fungi of Australia form an enormous and phenomenally diverse group, a huge range of freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats with many ecological roles, for example as saprobes, parasites and mutualistic symbionts of algae, animals and plants, and as agents of biodeterioration. Where plants produce, and animals consume, the fungi recycle, and as such they ensure the sustainability of ecosystems.
The Ustilaginomycotina is a subdivision within the division Basidiomycota of the kingdom Fungi. It consists of the classes Ustilaginomycetes and Exobasidiomycetes, and in 2014 the subdivision was reclassified and the two additional classes Malasseziomycetes and Monilielliomycetes added. The name was first published by Doweld in 2001; Bauer and colleagues later published it in 2006 as an isonym. Ustilagomycotina and Agaricomycotina are considered to be sister groups, and they are in turn sister groups to the subdivision Pucciniomycotina.
Dikarya is a subkingdom of Fungi that includes the divisions Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, both of which in general produce dikaryons, may be filamentous or unicellular, but are always without flagella. The Dikarya are most of the so-called "higher fungi", but also include many anamorphic species that would have been classified as molds in historical literature. Phylogenetically the two divisions regularly group together. In a 1998 publication, Thomas Cavalier-Smith referred to this group as the Neomycota.
Pucciniomycotina is a subdivision of fungus within the division Basidiomycota. The subdivision contains 10 classes, 21 orders, and 38 families. Over 8400 species of Pucciniomycotina have been described - more than 8% of all described fungi. The subdivision is considered a sister group to Ustilaginomycotina and Agaricomycotina, which may share the basal lineage of Basidiomycota, although this is uncertain due to low support for placement between the three groups. The group was known as Urediniomycetes until 2006, when it was elevated from a class to a subdivision and named after the largest order in the group, Pucciniales.
Agaricomycotina is one of three subdivisions of the Basidiomycota, and represents all of the fungi which form macroscopic fruiting bodies. Agaricomycotina contains over 30,000 species, divided into three classes: Tremellomycetes, Dacrymycetes, and Agaricomycetes. Around 98% of the species are in the class Agaricomycetes, including all the agarics, bracket fungi, clavarioid fungi, corticioid fungi, and gasteroid fungi. Tremellomycetes contains many basidiomycete yeasts and some conspicuous jelly fungi. Dacrymycetes contains a further group of jelly fungi. These taxa are founded on molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, and supersede earlier morphology-based classifications. Agaricomycotina contains nearly one third of all described species of fungi.
The Tremellomycetes are a class of dimorphic fungi in the Agaricomycotina. Some species have gelatinous basidiocarps or (microscopically) a sacculate parenthesome. There are six orders, 17 families, and 39 genera in the Tremellomycetes. Tremellomycetes include yeasts, dimorphic taxa, and species that form complex fruiting bodies. Tremellomycetes include some fungi that are human and animal pathogens in the genera Cryptococcus, Naganishia, Papiliotrema, and Trichosporon and some fungi that are cultivated for food in the genera Tremella and Naematelia.
The Wallemiomycetes are a class of fungi in the division Basidiomycota. It consists of the single order Wallemiales, containing the single family Wallemiaceae, which in turn contains the single genus Wallemia. The phylogenetic origin of the lineage was placed to various parts of Basidiomycota, but according to the analysis of a larger dataset it is a sister group of Agaricomycotina. The genus contains species of xerophilic molds that are found worldwide. The seven described species are distinguished by conidial size, xerotolerance, halotolerance, chaotolerance, growth temperature regimes, extracellular enzyme activity profiles, and secondary metabolite patterns. They are typically isolated from low-moisture foods, indoor air dust, salterns and soil. W. sebi is thought to be one of the causes of the hypersensitivity pneumonitis known as the farmer's lung disease, but since the other species were recognised and separated from W. sebi only recently, their role in the disease cannot be excluded.
Entorrhizomycetes is the sole class in the phylum Entorrhizomycota within the Fungi subkingdom Dikarya along with Basidiomycota and Ascomycota. It contains three genera and is a small group of teliosporic root parasites that form galls on plants in the Juncaceae (rush) and Cyperaceae (sedge) families. Prior to 2015 this phylum was placed under the subdivision Ustilaginomycotina. A 2015 study did a "comprehensive five-gene analyses" of Entorrhiza and concluded that the former class Entorrhizomycetes is possibly either a close sister group to the rest of Dikarya or Basidiomycota.
Pucciniomycetes is a diverse class of fungi in the subphylum Pucciniomycotina of phylum Basidiomycota. The class contains 5 orders, 21 families, 190 genera, and approximately 8,016 species. It has been estimated that this class contains about one third of all teleomorphic basidiomycetes. Pucciniomycetes contains many economically important plant pathogenic fungal rusts; the order Pucciniales is the largest clade in this class, representing approximately 7,000 species.
Fevansia is a fungal genus in the family Albatrellaceae. A monotypic genus, it contains the single rare truffle-like species Fevansia aurantiaca, found in old-growth forests of Oregon. The name Fevansia honors Frank Evans of the North American Truffling Society, who collected the holotype specimen. Aurantiaca is Latin for "pale orange", referring to the color of the peridium.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to life forms:
Tricholoma acerbum is a mushroom of the agaric family Tricholomataceae. It is found in Europe and North America.
Orthomycotina is a clade of fungi containing Agaricomycotina and Ustilaginomycotina, or all Basidiomycete fungi except Pucciniomycotina according to the 2007 fungal phylogeny "The Mycota: A Comprehensive Treatise on Fungi as Experimental Systems for Basic and Applied Research" and Tedersoo et al. 2018.
References
- ↑ Kirk PM, Cannon PF, Minter DW, Stalpers JA (2008). Dictionary of the Fungi (10th ed.). Wallingford: CABI. p. 78. ISBN 0-85199-826-7.