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Fungi

What are Microfungi?

Fungi includes microorganisms such as microfungi (yeasts and molds), as well as macrofungi such as mushrooms. Microfungi are an artificial, meaning that they are only distinguished from macrofungi by the absence of a large, multicellular fruiting body.

Macrofungi’s fruiting body or sporocarps is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as

basidia⁠

asci⁠

, are born. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life cycle, while the rest of the life cycle is characterized by vegetative mycelial growth and asexual spore production.

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Graphical representation of types of fungus.

More information

Fungi

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What are lichens?

A lichen, or lichenized fungus, is actually two main organisms functioning as a single stable unit. Lichens comprise a fungus living in a symbiotic relationship with an alga or cyanobacterium. There are about 17,000 species of lichen worldwide.

It’s important to remember that any association between a fungus and alga or cyanobacterium doesn’t automatically count as lichenization. In lichen associations, the fungus is able to form structures unknown in non-lichenized fungi (called the thallus) and the fungus also affects and changes the morphology of the photobiont. Hence, fungus-algal associations in which this is not the case are not considered lichens. Mosses are NOT lichens.

The fungal component of a lichen is known as the "mycobiont," and the algal or cyanobacterial component is known as the “photobiont.” The scientific name for a lichen is the same as that of the mycobiont, regardless of the identity of the photobiont.

More information:

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What Are Lichens?⁠

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What is a lichen? (Alan Silverside's photographs of lichens (FAQ))⁠

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Lichen genus from Colombia

The Microbiomes of Seven Lichen Genera Reveal Host Specificity, a Reduced Core Community and Potential as Source of Antimicrobials⁠

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Spore forming: Fungi spread either by forming reproductive spores that are carried on wind and rain or by growing and extending their hyphae. Hyphae are thread-like, strands of cells and grow as new cells form at the tips. A network of branching hyphae is called mycelium (plural mycelia).

Fungal spores are microscopic biological particles that allow fungi to be reproduced. They can be sexual or asexual. Most fungi require warmth and humidity to grow, reproduce and release their spores into the environment. Many fungi produce only small amounts of spores which rarely get airborne in quantity. However, some species are very prolific and widespread, producing high concentrations of spores which are readily dispersed into the atmosphere.

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Fungal Spores: types of fungal spores | Online Training Course⁠

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An example of spore forming microfungi are Mucor sp and Coccidiodes sp.

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Spore forming fungi

In fungi and fungus-like organisms, spores are often classified by the structure in which meiosis and spore production occurs. Since fungi are often classified according to their spore-producing structures, these spores are often characteristic of a particular taxon of the fungi.

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Sporangiospores⁠

: spores produced by a sporangium in many fungi such as zygomycetes.

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Zygospores⁠

: spores produced by a zygosporangium, characteristic of zygomycetes.

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Ascospores⁠

: spores produced by an ascus, characteristic of ascomycetes.

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Basidiospores⁠

: spores produced by a basidium, characteristic of basidiomycetes.

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Aeciospores⁠

: spores produced by an aecium in some fungi such as rusts or smuts.

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Urediniospores⁠

: spores produced by a uredinium in some fungi such as rusts or smuts.

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Teliospores⁠

: spores produced by a telium in some fungi such as rusts or smuts.

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Oospores⁠

: spores produced by an oogonium, characteristic of oomycetes.

Pathogen: A fungi might be or become an infectious agent that can cause disease or illness to certain hosts. The host, meaning the organisms that harbors the microorganism in a symbiotic relationship, can be from plants, animals, fungi to humans. Sometimes an organism can be a pathogen of multiple hosts. Pathogenic fungus include Aspergillus sp., Cryptococcus sp., Histoplasma sp. among others.

More information about human fungi pathogens visit

Types of Fungal Diseases | Fungal Diseases | CDC⁠

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Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR): AMR is the ability of a microbe to resist the effects of antimicrobials that once could successfully treat the microbe infection in humans, animals or plants. Antimicrobial resistance is a process that occurs naturally, but with the exacerbated use of antimicrobials due to human activities microbes have accelerated the rate of developing resistance. In Fungi AMR is also referred as Antifungal Resistance.

More information about fungi AMR visit

Antifungal Resistance | Fungal Diseases | CDC⁠

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Extremophile: Microbes with optimal growth in environmental conditions considered extreme in comparison to the environmental conditions that are comfortable to humans such as low/high temperature, acidity, alkalinity, or chemical concentration. There are different types and degrees of extremophiles. They are not exclusive, meaning that a microbe can be for example an acidophile and thermophile.

There can be microbes that can be more extreme than others within the same extremophile type. For example: There could be slight halophiles that grow on 0.3 to 0.8 M, 1.7 to 4.8 % NaCl, moderate halophiles that grow on 0.8 to 3.4 M, 4.7 to 20 % NaCl and extreme halophiles that grow on 3.4 to 5.1 M, 20 to 30 % NaCl.

Some microbes might tolerate extreme conditions. However they do not do well under these conditions and their optimal conditions are within normal parameters (temperature, salinity, etc). Tolerant microbes are not considered extremophiles.

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Table of different types of microbial extremophiles

Metabolism: Is the means by which the microbe obtains the energy and nutrients needed to live and reproduce. All microbial metabolisms can be arranged according to three principles: How the microbe obtains energy for living and growing; how the microbe obtain reducing equivalents used in energy conservation and biosynthetic reactions; and how the microbe obtains carbon for synthesizing cell mass.

(can add specifics about diatoms if needed)

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Microbial metabolisms

Microbiome: Community of microbes living together in a particular habitat or host. Habitat could be water or soil biomes, and hosts could be from plants to humans. We have also included extreme biomes. Some microbes can live in multiple biomes.

Water biomes can be classified on:

Fresh: Defined as having a low salt concentration usually less than 1%. It includes ponds, lakes, streams, rivers and wetlands.

Marine: Comprises systems of open-ocean and unprotected coastal habitats, characterized by exposure to wave action, tidal fluctuation, and ocean currents as well as systems that largely resemble these. Water in the ocean biome is generally within the salinity range of seawater 30 to 38 ppt.

Mangrove: Composed by Mangrove plants mangroves are able to withstand high levels of salinity as well as regions of anoxia and frequent tidal inundation. This biome often occurs near tropical and sub-tropical estuaries in areas protected from high energy wave action.

Sediment: Is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion from land to the water by the action of wind, water, or ice.

Brackish: Is water having more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) with fresh water together, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers.

Soil Biomes can be classified on:

Tundra: Includes only low-growing vegetation such as dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, mosses, and lichens. Tundra biomes rarely have monthly average temperatures above 10 degrees Celsius and have low precipitation ratios. Tundra is also found at the tops of very high mountains elsewhere in the world.

Forest: Includes densely packed vegetation which strongly limits light penetration to the forest floor. Can be classified on Temperate, Boreal and Tropical forest.

Cropland: Is an anthropogenic terrestrial biome which is primarily used for agricultural activity and which contains no village or larger human settlements.

Grassland: Includes large, rolling terrains of grasses, flowers and herbs. The annual precipitation is great enough to support grasses, and in some areas a few trees.

Beach Sand: Sand close to sea or ocean.

Sediment: Is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion from land to the water by the action of wind, water, or ice.

Host Biomes can be classified on:

Animal: Any vertebrate or invertebrate macro-organism.

Coral: Marine invertebrate typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual “polyps”.

Sponges: Multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them. Sponges are worldwide in their distribution, living in a wide range of ocean habitats, from the polar regions to the tropics

Plant: Multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae.

Fungi: macro-organisms that includes mushrooms.

Human: Human being of any race. If human host, you need specify the specific part of the body where the microbe is found. Some microbes might be specific to certain parts of the body while some others are generalists, meaning they might be found in multiple parts of the human body. Body sites include: Blood, gastrointestinal tract, skin, oral cavity, urogenital tract, nasal passage.

Extreme Biomes can be classified on:

Space: Organisms found out of the Earth’s atmosphere in man-built facilities such as the International Space Station.

Depths: deep sea is the lowest layer in the ocean. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean, and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter produced in the photic zone.

Desert: Are the driest of all the biomes. It loses more liquid water by evapotranspiration than is supplied by precipitation.

Polar: It is the coldest, windiest, and driest biomes on Earth, located on the South and North pole.

Volcanic: Surroundings of a volcano. It can be a volcano on the surface or deep on the sea.

Geothermal/Hot Springs: A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater that rises from the Earth's crust.

Urban Environments: Referred to any urban, human-made setting. Example: Cities, laboratories, farms, reactors, etc.

Food: Referred to any type of food that can be consumed by humans or animals

All figures were created in

BioRender⁠

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