The Kingdom of Fungi
Common characteristics of fungi:
- Heterotrophy: live of organic matter
- multiple cell forms, mostly multicellular structures (although some unicellular, flagellated fungi exist)
- Dikaryon stage: during sexual reproduction, two haploid nuclei co-exist for a while before they form one diploid nucleus
- Cell wall contains chitin (similar to crab shells)
- Nuclear mitosis: nuclear membrane does not disintegrate during mitosis (as in plants and animals)
Phylogeny of DNA and protein sequences: fungi are closer related to animals than plants
Multicellularity has evolved several times!