Question

what are the main controversies with the fungal phylogeny as a kingdom?

Answer 1

The kingdom Fungi

The kingdom Fungi is a highly diverse clade of eukaryotes found in virtually all environments, particularly in terrestrial ecosystems. As early fungi made the evolutionary journey from water to land and branched off from animals, they shed flagella (propelled them through their aquatic environment) and evolved by new mechanisms such as explosive volleys and fragrances to disperse their spores and reproduce in a terrestrial setting. Little is known about evolutionary relationships among fungi due to simple morphology, the lack of a useful fossil record and fungal diversity and remains a source of much controversy.

The 2007 classification of Kingdom Fungi recognizes seven phyla. Among them two phyla the Ascomycota and the Basidiomycota are contained within a branch representing subkingdom Dikarya, the most species rich and familiar group. It includes most food-spoilage molds, all the mushrooms, most plant pathogenic fungi and the beer, wine, and bread yeasts. But the lengths of the branches are not proportional to evolutionary distances.

Major controversies are

1. Phylogenetic analysis has shown that the fungal kingdom is part of great eukaryotic groups which occurred one billion years ago.
2. Mycology (The study of fungi) has been considered a branch of botany, there is also evidence that the kingdom Fungi is more closely related to Animalia than to Plantae.
3. The analysis of amino acid sequences from numerous enzymes indicated that plants, animals and fungi had a common ancestor about a billion years ago and that plants diverged first.
4. The fungi are derived from algae, has been definitively abandoned.
5. The taxonomy of some pathogenic fungi is particularly unstable and controversial at present. ie., the names of taxa and their consequent diseases are potentially confusing. For eg;  the fungus Allescheria boydii (named in 1970s) was changed to Petriellidium boydii and then to Pseudallescheria boydii in recent years.
6. The replacement of the terms “anamorph” and “teleomorph” with “mitosporic fungus” and “meiosporic fungus”, respectively.
7. Regarding the higher fungal taxa; i.e.,the fungi should be assigned to two kingdoms, Protoctista and Eumycota or they should be assigned to three, Chromista, Fungi and Protozoa.
8. Chytridiomycota in the Fungi has been controversial because these organisms possess flagella. But they included in the Protoctista in comparison of cell wall polysaccharides and lysine synthesis.