What are fungi?

About 80 000 to 120 000 species of fungi have been described to date, although the total number of species is estimated at around 1.5 million (Hawksworth, 2001; Kirk et al., 2001). This would render fungi one of the least-explored biodiversity resources of our planet. It is notoriously difficult to delimit fungi as a group against other eukaryotes, and debates over the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups have been going on for well over a century. In recent years, the main arguments have been between taxonomists striving towards a phylogenetic definition based especially on the similarity of relevant DNA sequences, and others who take a biological approach to the subject and regard fungi as organisms sharing all or many key ecological or physiological characteristics – the ‘union of fungi’ (Barr, 1992). Being interested mainly in the way fungi function in nature and in the laboratory, we take the latter approach and include several groups in this book which are now known to have arisen independently of the monophyletic ‘true fungi’ (Eumycota) and have been placed outside them in recent classification schemes (see Fig. 1.25). The most important of these ‘pseudofungi’ are the Oomycota (see Chapter 1973).