Three truths
- Timed
- Branched off about 640 million years ago · the last 15% of life's story
- Named
- ≈50,000 named living species · 2.9% of all named
- Weighed
- Part of Fungi (≈12 Gt C), not measured separately.
Eukaryotes · fungi · phylum
Mushrooms and rusts
Basidiomycota
Living · roughly 50,000 described species
Fungi that include most familiar mushrooms, as well as rusts and smuts. A mushroom is only the reproductive structure of a larger underground network.
A mushroom is only the fruit; the fungus itself is a web of threads underground.
Key characteristics
- Spores form on club-shaped cells called basidia
- Includes many mushrooms and bracket fungi
- Many break down wood
- Habitat
- Soil, wood and living plants
- Branched off
- About 640 million years ago (approximate)
- Parent lineage
- Dikarya
Classification
Sources
- Basidiomycota (Wikipedia) · Wikipedia
- TimeTree: the timescale of life · TimeTree
- Open Tree of Life · Open Tree of Life
- Tree of Life Web Project · Tree of Life Web Project