mushrooms

Biologist

2022

We explain what fungi are, their types, how they reproduce and other characteristics. Also, what are parasitic fungi.

About 100,000 species of fungi are known.

What are mushrooms?

Fungi are the living beings belonging to fungi kingdom: molds, yeast and mushrooms. This set of living beings can be considered an intermediate kingdom between plants and animals, from which it was separated more than a million years ago, since its members lead immobile and insensitive lives like plants, but have a nutrition heterotrophic like animals, that is, they consume organic material to survive.

Fungi were not always fully understood, and until recent times, many things that were considered plants turned out to be mushrooms, and many that were considered mushrooms turned out to be something else. This is partly due to the fact that the kingdom of fungi presents an immense diversity, with polycellular individuals of macroscopic size, and with beings perceptible only through the microscope.

Fungi exist in practically all habitats, even some under the Water, and about 100,000 are currently known species different from the estimate of more than a million total species of the planet Earth. Many of them are of immense use in industry, especially yeasts, both in gastronomy and in pharmacology, and many others, on the other hand, cause diseases in people and animals.

The branch of biology that studies fungi is mycology.

Characteristics of mushrooms

In symbiosis with algae and plants, fungi form lichens.

The fungi constitute an entire kingdom, whose general characteristics can be summarized as follows:

  • They are living beings eukaryotes, evolutionarily closer to animals than to plants.
  • They lack mobility and senses, like plants, but unlike them they do not have autotrophic nutrition (photosynthesis or chemosynthesis), but rather consume available organic matter (heterotrophic nutrition). But unlike animals, they cannot ingest food, they must absorb it.
  • The cells of fungi have a cell wall (like the vegetables cells), but instead of being composed of cellulose, is composed of chitin, the same substance that many animals use for their covers and shells.
  • They may be unicellular and microscopic, or multicellular and macroscopic, depending on the species, and inhabit very different habitats, terrestrial or underwater, or also parasitize the bodies of plants and animals.
  • They generally occupy an ecological decomposing niche, that is, detritophagus, they help to decompose the waste organic matter.
  • They usually form associations symbiotic with algae and plants, thus giving rise to lichens.
  • They serve as food for many species of animals, including humans.

Reproduction of fungi

The spores can resist until conditions are conducive to germinate.

Fungi reproduce through spores, which are resistant forms to the environment capable of persisting, waiting for the moment when the conditions are conducive to germinate. These spores can be produced sexual or asexually, in organs known as sporangia, and are released into the environment, where wind, water and other environmental factors help to disperse them.

Types of mushrooms

The classification of fungi has varied greatly over time, as more and better is known about these peculiar living things. In general, the following five main types of fungi are differentiated:

  • Basidiomycetes (Basidiomycota), fungi that develop mushrooms, from which the spores of the fungus are born.
  • Ascomycetes (Ascomycota), fungi that instead of mushrooms have asci, which are spore-producing sex cells.
  • Glomeromycetes (Glomeromycota), known as mycorrhizae, that is, symbiotic unions between a fungus and the roots of a plant, in which water and nutrients are exchanged for carbohydrates that the fungus cannot synthesize.
  • Zygomycetes (Zygomycota), molds capable of forming zygospores, that is, spores that remain active for a long time until they can finally germinate.
  • Chitridiomycetes (Chytridiomycota), microscopic and primitive fungi, generally aquatic, whose spores are flagellated (zoospores), that is, capable of their own movement.

Parasitic fungi

The fungi that cause yeast infection are microscopic.

Fungi are not only capable of defending themselves through poisons and toxins (some of them hallucinogenic), capable of causing harm or death in animals that eat them, but they are also possible causes of diseases, especially yeasts and other fungi microscopic.

These fungal conditions are mostly treatable, and in some cases they are communicable, as is the case with Candida albicans (responsible for sexually transmitted candidiasis). Another common case is the so-called “athlete's foot” (Tinea pedis) that is lodged in the skin, as a result of continuous conditions of humidity, product of sweating. For these types of conditions there are antifungal medications.

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