What Family of Plants Do Mushrooms Belong to
Have yous always picked upwards something and wondered, "what is that?" Taxonomists help reply that question by dutifully documenting phenotypic (trait) and genotypic (genetic) differences among living things that allow them to be speedily distinguished and identified. Placing organisms into categories is useful so that instead of describing a slew of characteristics, we can merely use broad categories every bit reference points to inform united states of america not only about the nature of an individual, merely besides most its relationship to other like organisms. A new organism classified as a vertebrate, for instance, will be commonly understood to have a spine equanimous of vertebrae. For scientists, taxonomic groups are touchstones of understanding: a foundation upon which to build new noesis. This metaphor communicates the fundamental importance of taxonomy, but it implies a stability that taxonomic classification lacks.
For much of scientific history, fungi take been a botanist's domain. Until very recently — reasonably within a human lifetime — fungi remained classified as plants as part of a centuries-erstwhile division that tin can exist summed up by an axiom attributed to Carl Linnaeus: "Plants grow and alive; Animals grow, alive and feel." This "father of modernistic taxonomy" (and deviser of racist classifications of humans) classified living organisms into two categories: either animals or plants. This paradigm can be rephrased equally animals and "not animals," equally the category "plants" long represented a canaille group of unrelated organisms. Without the context of evolution, these classifications sought to identify organisms by perceived, oberservable similarity, instead of "relatedness" in a mod, genetic sense.
Classifying fungi as plants has led to some curious events. The primeval description of fungi pathogenic to insects (likely Cordyceps militaris) by the French entomologist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur was equally a plant root. The Mycological Society of America was established while fungi were nevertheless considered plants, and the society's journal Mycologia originated from the New York Botanical Garden. This garden continues to maintain one of the world'due south largest collections of fungi in their herbarium. This pairing of fungi with plants is a nowadays trouble: misclassification matters because how we classify organisms affects how we understand, back up (financially and culturally) and engage with them.
Why Were Fungi Ever Considered Plants?
Today, nosotros know that fungi are not plants, merely the botanical history of fungi provides an interesting perspective on our scientific biases, on how we allocate organisms and how these impact our collective knowledge.
Taxonomic classifications are in abiding flux, as we refine our understanding of the incredible multifariousness that surrounds united states. Even in the age of genomics, nosotros have only but scratched the surface of this diversity. Because we don't accept a full picture of the diversity of life, our best laid classifications can be (and are) routinely shifted by a newcomer or fresh testify. Today, nosotros take the luxury of molecular tools for classification, but taxonomic classifications can be traced back earlier the discovery of DNA, the concept of evolution and the invention of the microscope. Early on classifications were express by the tools (and views) available to them.
We must keep this caveat in heed when examining some of the early attempts at classifying life. Mushrooms were the earliest representatives of fungi to be classified. Based on observations of mushrooms, early taxonomists determined that fungi are immobile (fungi are not immobile) and they have rigid cell walls that back up them. These characteristics were sufficient for early scientists to decide that fungi are not animals and to lump them with plants.
Reason 1: Fungi Lack Chloroplasts
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Nosotros have arrived at our start reason fungi are not plants: fungi lack chloroplasts. This verdant, unifying feature of plants is readily observable to the eye, and these chlorophyll-containing plastids go along to exist an of import milestone for our modern understanding of plant development. Of grade, at that place are plants that lack functional chloroplasts, such equally ghost pipes (Monotropa), but we know these flowering plants ("higher plants," one time upon a time) lost chlorophyll during their evolutionary history. This evolutionary context was defective until Darwin came along, but demonstrates how callously uncooperative biology is with our artificial delineations. Wide outlines for our categories for living things were based on what we could see, and microbes, including fungi without a fruiting trunk to observe, were an afterthought.
Reason two: Fungi Have a Unique Way of Acquiring Nutrients
Old paradigms for classifying life were so ingrained that challenging them was a difficult task. Notwithstanding, the various groups of fungi provided scientists with a nice tool for the task. In 1955, George Willard Martin challenged the notion that fungi should exist classified equally plants with an article titled "Are fungi plants?". In the introduction, he hazarded a gauge that near mycologists at the time would answer 'yes.' Yet, his thorough exam of the topic influenced Robert Harding Whittaker in his pursuit to revolutionize taxonomy.
Whittaker published several manufactures proposing more kingdoms of life. He eventually settled on 5 kingdoms, but he was engaged in a philosophical, decades-long contend on the appropriate manner to catalogue life. While a gimmicky taxonomist Herbert Copeland argued for detailed description of features for classification informed by historical understanding, Whittaker avant-garde his theory based on ecology. Whittaker's theory was based on three types of ecological roles organisms can play: producers (photosynthesizers), consumers (eaters) and reducers (decomposers).
Arguably, Whittaker'southward reasoning finally extricated fungi from the kingdom of plants, and then it is our next reason fungi are not plants: fungi have a unique fashion of acquiring nutrients. Fungi secrete digestive enzymes, then absorb nutrients from their surroundings. This is in sharp contrast to plants, which make their own nutrient (thank you to their chloroplasts). Information technology was clear to Whittaker that this difference distinguished fungi from plants ecologically, but he was also grappling with a more bones question: why are we classifying organisms? Is it better to endeavour to unify organisms by evolutionary history than to divide them?
When the nomenclature of living organisms was first undertaken, we believed the itemize could one 24-hour interval be consummate. Whittaker knew that new editions of this itemize were produced each 24-hour interval, so instead of basing taxonomy on features solitary, he argued for kingdoms that represented major evolutionary trajectories. These categories would be more useful for evolutionary and ecological questions. He published his textbook-ready five kingdom classification in 1969, which included carve up fungal and plant kingdoms.
Reason 3: Molecular Bear witness Demonstrates Fungi Are More Closely Related to Animals Than to Plants
The proposed separation of fungi and plants is indisputably supported by molecular evidence. Computational phylogenetics comparing eukaryotes revealed that fungi are more closely related to us than to plants. Fungi and animals class a clade called opisthokonta, which is named after a single, posterior flagellum present in their last common ancestor. Today, this posterior flagellum propels primitive fungal spores and animal sperm alike.
This is our terminal reason fungi are not plants: the all-time bachelor molecular evidence demonstrates fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. These computational and molecular approaches are convincing considering they provide robust evolutionary histories that indicate organismal relationships and guess when they diverged from common ancestors. A molecular understanding of life has uncovered 3 possible major domains of life: Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya (nested within Archaea). These are distinguished past cellular components (due east.chiliad., membrane-bound organelles) and the composition of the jail cell membrane.
Although they've been granted their own kingdom, fungi continue to demand taxonomic attention. Molecular approaches reveal that mycologists have described some fungi more than one time. Various names for sexual (i.e., producing mushrooms) and asexual forms of the same fungus have inspired an attempt to revise fungal taxa, humbly called "1 Name = 1 Mucus." This initiative continues today, but the challenge is immense, with databases like Index Fungorum listing synonyms and citations with descriptions of fungi.
What has the (wrong) classification of mycology as a botanical pursuit done to the advancement of the field? The more nosotros know about fungi, the meliorate prepared we are to protect ourselves (and other organisms) from fungal infections. Fungi have and then much to uniquely teach us about (to name just 3 examples) evolution, ecology and cellular biology. Plant scientific discipline departments continue to train many mycologists across the country, only where would mycology be if this subject were supported with a similar number of departments? Would more than microbiome studies explicitly include the mycobiome? Would we be better prepared for fungal threats to food security if the U.S. Department of Agronomics instead had a Animal, Plant *and Fungi* Wellness Protection Service? We have much to larn nearly fungi, but 1 thing is for certain: fungi are non plants.
Source: https://asm.org/Articles/2021/January/Three-Reasons-Fungi-Are-Not-Plants
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