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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to fungi and mycology: . Fungi – "Fungi" is plural for "fungus". A fungus is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes unicellular microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as multicellular fungi that produce familiar fruiting forms known as mushrooms.
The English word fungus is directly adopted from the Latin fungus (mushroom), used in the writings of Horace and Pliny. [10] This in turn is derived from the Greek word sphongos (σφόγγος 'sponge'), which refers to the macroscopic structures and morphology of mushrooms and molds; [11] the root is also used in other languages, such as the German Schwamm ('sponge') and Schimmel ('mold').
Rhizopus is a genus of common saprophytic fungi on plants and specialized parasites on animals. They are found in a wide variety of organic substances, including "mature fruits and vegetables", [2] jellies, syrups, leather, bread, peanuts, and tobacco. They are multicellular.
Carex utriculata with smut fungus affecting individual seeds. The smuts are multicellular fungi characterized by their large numbers of teliospores.The smuts get their name from a Germanic word for 'dirt' because of their dark, thick-walled, and dust-like teliospores.
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 (loosely termed "ascolichens") such as Cladonia belong to the Ascomycota. Ascomycota is a monophyletic group (containing all of the descendants of a common ancestor).
This stage of the life cycle, along with its preference for damp shady habitats, likely contributed to the original mischaracterization of the organism as a fungus. P. polycephalum is used as a model organism for research into motility, cellular differentiation, chemotaxis, cellular compatibility, and the cell cycle. It is commonly cultivated.
The sporocarp (also known as fruiting body, fruit body or fruitbody) of fungi is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life cycle , [ 1 ] while the rest of the life cycle is characterized by vegetative mycelial growth and asexual ...
Polypores are also called bracket fungi or shelf fungi, and they characteristically produce woody, shelf- or bracket-shaped or occasionally circular fruiting bodies that are called conks. [1] Over one thousand polypore species have been described to science, [ 2 ] but a large part of the diversity is still unknown even in relatively well ...