ABSTRACT
Being sessile as autotrophic plants and heterotrophic as animals, fungi represent a peculiar combination among eukaryotes. For the first time, this book views fungi from the angle of biodiversity. It commences with the description of their forms and functions, and is followed by an account on systematics and classification. Fungi consist of 106,761 species, which are accommodated in six phyla. Many mycologists, who have predicted the potential existence of 1.5 to 8.0 million species, are not aware of the fact that 90% fungi are clonals and their clonal cycles are rarely interrupted by sexual reproduction. Consequently, for the generation of new gene combination – the raw material for evolution and speciation – the clonal fungi depend solely on random mutations. As clonality decelerates diversity, their species number may not exceed 260,000. Life cycles for 26 representative species are described with illustrations. A survey indicates the description of life cycles for 77 species. In any case, the known number of cycles may not exceed for 100 species. It amounts to 0.94% of fungi, which may be compared with 3% for the free-living polychaete worms.
