United Nations Biodiversity has urged people globally to use the word ‘funga’ whenever they say ‘flora and fauna’, in order to highlight the importance of fungi.
Key points
- Mycologists, mostly from Latin America, established the term “funga” five years ago.
- It refers to the levels of diversity of fungi in any given place, and is analogous to “flora and fauna”, which refer to plants and animals.
- Unlike flora and fauna, it is not a Latin term but was chosen because it is morphologically similar.
- R.H. Whittaker (1969) proposed a Five Kingdom Classification. The kingdoms defined by him were named Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia.
- The main criteria for classification used by him include cell structure, thallus organisation, mode of nutrition, reproduction and phylogenetic relationships.
About fungi
- The fungi constitute a unique kingdom of heterotrophic organisms. When your bread develops a mould or your orange rots it is because of fungi.
- The common mushroom you eat and toadstools are also fungi. White spots seen on mustard leaves are due to a parasitic fungus.
- Some unicellular fungi, e.g., yeast are used to make bread and beer.
- Other fungi cause diseases in plants and animals; wheat rust-causing Puccinia is an important example.
- Some are the source of antibiotics, e.g., Penicillium.
- Fungi are cosmopolitan and occur in air, water, soil and on animals and plants.
- With the exception of yeasts which are unicellular, fungi are filamentous.
- Most fungi are heterotrophic and absorb soluble organic matter from dead substrates and hence are called saprophytes. Those that depend on living plants and animals are called parasites.
- They can also live as symbionts – in association with algae as lichens and with roots of higher plants as mycorrhiza.
- Reproduction in fungi can take place by vegetative means – fragmentation, fission and budding.
