What are the distinguishing characters of kingdom fungi?
The distinguishing characters of kingdom fungiare as follows : (i) Fungi are non-vascular, non-seeded, non-flowering, eukaryotic achlorophyllous (nongreen), heterophic (heterophytic) spore bearing, thalloid, multicellular decomposers and mineralisers of organic wastes and help in recycling of matter in the biosphere. (ii) In true fungi the plant body is thallus. It may be non-mycelial or mycelial. a. Non mycelial: The non-mycelial forms are unicellular; however they may form a pseudomycelium by budding, b. Mycelial: In mycelial form plant body is made up of thread like structures called hyphae. Hyphae are usually branched tube like structure bounded by a cell-wall of chitin. The hyphae may be septate (higher fungi) or aseptate (lower fungi). Septate hyphae may be of 3 kinds, uninucleate (monokaryotic hyphae), with binucleate cells (dikaryotic hyphae) ormultinucleate. Some fungi are aseptate and known as coenocytic fungi, with hundreds of nuclei in continuous cytoplasmic mass. (iii) The cell shows eukaryotic organization but lack chloroplast and Golgi bodies. The genetic material is DNA and mitosis is intracellular (karyochorisis). Fungi lack chlorophyll, hence, they do not prepare food by photosynthesis. Thus they can grow everywhere, where organic material is available. (v) Fungi are heterotrophs that acquire their nutrient by absorption. They store their food in the form of glycogen. (vi) The primitive fungi have oogamous type of sexual reproduction where as most advanced ones do not have sexual reproduction.
