Basidiomycota

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iBasidiomycota

Basidiomycetes from Ernst Haeckel's 1904 Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature)

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Fungi
Division:	Basidiomycota

Classes

Subdivision Teliomycotina
   Urediniomycetes
Subdivision Ustilaginomycotina
   Ustilaginomycetes
Subdivision Hymenomycotina
   Homobasidiomycetes - mushrooms
   Heterobasidiomycetes - jelly fungi

The Division Basidiomycota is a large taxon within the Kingdom Fungi that includes those species that produce spores in a club-shaped structure called a basidium. Essentially the sibling group of the Ascomycota, it contains some 22,300 distinct species (37% of the described fungi). The Basidiomycota was traditionally divided into Homobasidiomycetes (the true mushrooms); and Heterobasidiomycetes (the rusts and smuts). The Basidiomycota is now thought to comprise three major clades, the Hymenomycotina (Hymenomycetes; mushrooms), the Ustilaginomycotina (Ustilaginomycetes; true smut fungi), and the Teliomycotina (Urediniomycetes; rusts).

Basidiomycota include both unicellular (some yeasts) and multicellular forms and sexual and asexual species. They occur in terrestrial and aquatic environments (including the marine environment) and can be characterized by bearing sexual spores on basidia, having a long-lived dikaryon, and usually showing clamp connections.

[edit] Life cycle

Basidiomycetes have an abnormal sexuality. They most often are heterothallic, but with a bipolar (unifactorial) or tetrapolar (bifactorial) mating system acting like many sexes. Usually, somatogamy (hyphogamy) is performed.

Most basidiomycetes live out most of their life as dikaryotic (heterokaryotic) mycelium, with karyogamy and meiosis happening in the basidium. There are examples of diploid life cycles as well: the genus Xerula was found to sometimes produce diploid clones as spores, and Armillaria, a common forest pathogen, has diploid mycelium, where karyogamy directly follows plasmogamy.