I Phylogeny and classification

For a long time taxonomists considered fungi to be members of the Plant Kingdom. This early classification was based on similarities in lifestyle: both fungi and plants are mainly sessile, and have similarities in general morphology and growth habitat. Like plants, fungi often grow in soil, in the case of mushrooms form conspicuous fruiting bodies, which sometimes bear resemblance to plants such as mosses. Moreover, both groups possess a cell wall, which is absent in the Animal kingdom. However, the fungi are now considered a separate kingdom, distinct from both plants and animals, from which they appear to have diverged approximately one billion years ago. Many studies have identified several distinct morphological, biochemical, and genetic features in the Fungi clearly delineating this group from the other kingdoms. For these reasons, the fungi are placed in their own kingdom.

Physiological ang morphological traits

Similar to animals and unlike most plants, fungi lack the capacity to synthesize organic carbon by chlorophyll- based photosynthesis; whereas plants store reduces carbon as starch, fungi, like animals and some bacteria, use glycogen for storage of carbohydrates. A major component of the cell wall in many fungal species is the nitrogen- containing carbohydrate, chitin, also present in some animals , such as insects and crustaceans, while the plant cell wall consists chiefly of the carbohydrate cellulose. The defining and unique characteristics of fungal cells include growth as hyphae, which are microscopic filaments of between 2-10 micrometres in diameter and up to several centimeters in length, and which combined form the fungal mycelium. Some fungi, such as yeasts, grow as single ovoid cells, similar to unicellular algae and the protists. Unlike many plants, most fungi lack an efficient vascular system, such as xylem and phloem for long-distance transport of water and nutrients; as an example for convergent evolution, some fungi, such as Armillaria, form rhizomorphs or mycelia cords, resembling and functionally related to, but morphologically distinct from, plant roots. Some characteristics shared between plants and Fungi include presence of vacuoles in the cell, and a similar pathway in the biosynthesis of terpens using mevalonic acid and pyrophosphate as biochemical precursors; plants however use an additional terpene biosynthesis pathway in the chloroplasts that is apparently absent in fungi. Ancestral traits shared among members of the fungi include chitinous cell walls and heterotrophy by absorption. A further characteristic of the fungi that is absent from other eukaryotes, and shared only with some bacteria, is the biosynthesis of the amino acid, L-lysine via the -aminoadipate pathway. Similar to plants, fungi produce a plethora of secondary metabolites functioning as defensive compounds or for niche adaptation; however, biochemical pathways for the synthesis of similar or even identical compounds often differ markedly between fungi and plants.

Evolutionary history
The first organisms having features typical of fungi date to 1,200 million years ago, the Proterosoic. However, fungal fossils do not become common and uncontroversial until the early Devonian, when they are abundant in the Rhynie chert. Even though traditionally included in botany curricula and textbooks, fungi are now thought to be more closely related to animals than to plants and are placed with the animals in the monophyletic group of opisthokonts. For much of the Paleozoic Era the fungi appear to have been aquatic and consisted of organisms similar to the extant chytrids in having flagellum-bearing spores. The early fossil record of the fungi is fragmentary, to say at least. The fungi probably colonized the land during the Cambrian long before land plants. All modern classes of fungi were present by the Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian Epoch). For some time after the PermianTriassic extinction event a fungal spike (originally thought to be an extraordinary abundance of fungal spores in sediments formed shortly after this event, suggested that fungi were the dominant life form during this period -nearly 100% of the fossil record available for this period. However, the relative proportion of fungal spores relative to spores formed by algal species is difficult to assess, the spike did not appear worldwide, and in many places it did not fall on the PermianTriassic boundary. Analyses using molecular phylogenetics support a monophyletic origin of the Fungi.The taxonomy of the Fungi is in a state of constant flux, especially due to recent research based on DNA comparisons. These current phylogenetic analyses often overturn classifications based on older and sometimes less discriminative methods based on morphological features and biological species concepts obtained from experimental matings. There is no unique generally accepted system at the higher taxonomic levels and there are constant name changes at every level, from species upwards. However, efforts among fungal researchers are now underway to establish and encourage usage of a unified and more consistent nomenclature. Fungal species can also have multiple scientific names depending on its life cycle and mode (sexual or asexual) of reproduction. Web sites such as Index Fungorum and ITIS define preffered up-to-date names (with cross-references to older synonyms), but do not always agree with each other. Cladogram A cladogram depicts the phylogenetic relationships between several groups of organisms in a tree like diagram. The current classification of Kingdom Fungi recognizes seven phyla, two of whichthe Ascomycota and the Basidiomycotaare contained within a branch representing subkingdom Dikarya.