Scientists and naturalists have historically had a difficult time classifying Fungi based on their morphology (physical characteristics) alone. Up until 1969, fungi were considered an odd branch of the plant kingdom. <br>What characteristics of fungi would lead people to group them with plants and not other organisms?<br>If you found one of the mushrooms shown above, you might be excused for mistaking them for plants. After all, they grow from the ground and don't move around like (most) animals do. But, looks can be deceiving, and closer examination shows that fungi aren't much like plants at all!<br>Fungi and animals: (Distant) cousins<br>Modern genetic analyses divide the Eukaryotes into six supergroups, which are classification groups similar to the Kingdoms that have been used for a long time. Most Eukaryotes are considered "protists" -- including slime molds, which were once thought to be just strange fungi. We know now that Fungi and Animalia are in the same supergroup, while Plants (along with green algae and red algae) are in a different one altogether! This is why sometimes people say that Fungi are more closely related to humans than to plants. <br>Forms of a fungus<br>Fungi are quite a lot like humans. Cellularly, that is. We both have nuclei, mitochondria, and a lot of cellular processes that are very similar. Fungal cells, though, do have cell walls. Prokaryotes and many eukaryotes have cell walls, but fungal walls contain chitin, something that plants, bacteria, and archaea don't have in their cell walls.<br><br>A mushroom is just one possible form that a fungus can take. If you find a mushroom growing in the ground, most of the actual "body" of the fungus is actually not the mushroom itself, but rather running throughout the soil underground! That "body" is made up of many thin, threadlike filaments called hyphae (sounds like "high fee"; if you have just one, it is called a hypha).
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