Kingdom Fungi

Fungi do not produce their own food. To survive they must absorb their nutrients from other organisms, mostly plants, dead or alive. Some of the groups within this kingdom play an important role in the decomposition of organic material in the estuary. In the process of breaking down organic particles they release inorganic nutrients in a form that can be used by plants, algae and some bacteria in their food production.

Most species of fungi are made up of hyphae, or long filaments of cells with walls of chitin, the hard material of insect and crustacean exoskeletons.

Some fungi extend their long hyphae into detrital particles. They excrete powerful enzymes, which break down food particles into dissolved nutrients that can diffuse through their cell walls. This allows fungi to feed on tough structural materials in plants, which are indigestible to other microbes, and higher animals.

They are in their own kingdom because their hereditary material is surrounded by a nuclear membrane. Unlike plants, they do not produce their own food. Unlike animals, they reproduce asexually through spores, or sex cells, which don’t need hereditary information from a complimentary cell. Occasionally, though, most fungi reproduce sexually, when the hyphae of two compatible fungi fuse.

Copyright © 2006 Barbara Driscoll.