Of plants and humans-Soumana Datta

HOW ARE FUNGI CLASSIFIED?

The true fungi, which make up the monophyletic clade called kingdom Fungi, comprise seven phyla:

Chytridiomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Microsporidia, Glomeromycota, Ascomycota, and Basidiomycota (the latter two being combined in the subkingdom Dikarya).

The following classification is adapted from Ainsworth & Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, 10th ed. (2008), and has been amended to adopt the phylogenetic arrangement from the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life (AFTOL) project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

AFTOL is a work in progress, and uncertainties remain about the exact relationships of many groups.

These uncertain groups are indicated in the annotated classification below by the term incertae sedis, meaning “of uncertain position,” the standard term for a taxonomic group of unknown or undefined relationship.

The phylogenetic classification of fungi divides the kingdom into 7 phyla, 10 subphyla, 35 classes, 12 subclasses, and 129 orders.