Kingdom Fungi- About 40,000 different kinds of fungi
- Not green because they don't have chlorophyll - Do not make their own food, most fungi feed on the remnant of dead plants and animals - Fungi are decomposers - changes dad things into a substance called humus, which is rich in nutrients - Soil rich in humus enables new strong plants to grow and provides a home for thousands of living things - Lives everywhere, some microscopic and others so big that they extend for more than thousand acres - Saprophytic fungi secrete enzymes to break down dead organic matter in recycling - parasitic fungi obtain their nutrients from living hosts - Fungi cell walls are made mostly of the carbohydrate chitin, which is also found in the exoskeleton of insects - Storage cabohydrate of fungi is glycogen, which is the same storage molecule found in animal muscle and liver cells. - Can be both reproduced sexually and asexually, although it is asexual most of the time. - Sexual lifecycle of fungi involves zygote that is only diploid cell when two mating types fuse, the two nuclie do not fuse but coexist until the right conditions at present. - Fusion results in the diploid zygote, which immediately undergoes meiosis to return to the haploid state. The coexistnce of two different mating types of nuclei if the dikaryotic stage, which is unique to fungi. |