SYNOPTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYLUM MUCOROMYCOTA
| EUKARYA> OPISTHOKONTA> UNIKONTA> FUNGI> BASAL FUNGI> BLASTOCLADIOMYCOTA |
MUCOROMYCOTA LINKS
| The following description comes from Patterson (1999), Margulis and Schwartz (1998), Alexopoulos and Mims (1979), Alexopoulos et al. (1996), Barr (1990), James et al. (2006a), and Adl et al. (2012). |
I. SYNONYMS: chytrids, Allomycota
II. NUMBER: > 610 species.
III. PHYLUM CHARACTERISTICS:
- A. ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION:
- Sporangiospores (text with tooltip) Asexual spores formed with the sporangium. ( aplanospores (text with tooltip) Non-motile resting spore. ) or modified sporangia (text with tooltip) Single celled or multicellular structure in which asexual spores are produced. (sac-like merosporangia) functioning as conidia (text with tooltip) Asexual reproductive spores formed on a conidiophore. .
- B. SEXUAL REPRODUCTION:
- Two morphologically similar gametangia fuse to produce a warty, thick zygospore (text with tooltip) Sexual spores produced by fusion of gametangia. . Meiosis within zygospore.
- C. VEGETATIVE HYPHAE:
- Haplophase (text with tooltip) Portion of life cycle during which the organism is haploid. ; no dikaryophase (text with tooltip) Cells contain a nucleus from each of the conjugating haploid parents. except in fused gametangia; aseptate (text with tooltip) Lacking septa (partitions within the hyphae). .
- D. CELL WALLS: Chitin and chitosan.
- E. ECOLOGY: Free-living to parasitic. Free-living forms mainly terrestrial saprobes. Parasites mainly of insects, but of other animals, too. Some parasitic on microbial eukaryotes.
| By Jack R. Holt and Carlos A. Iudica. Last revised: 04/21/2013 |
