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A characteristic that places fungi in a different kingdom from plants, bacteria, and some protists is chitin in their cell walls. Fungi, like animals, are heterotrophs; they acquire their food by absorbing dissolved molecules, typically by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment. Fungi do not photosynthesize.
Both plants and fungi associate with multiple symbiotic partners at once, and both plants and fungi are capable of preferentially allocating resources to one partner over another. [4] Mycorrhizal associations have profoundly impacted the evolution of plant life on Earth ever since the initial adaptation of plant life to land.
Mycorrhizal fungi colonizing plant roots acquire carbon directly from plant roots, provide phosphorus sources to plants, and have been shown to transport water. [7] Dark septate endophytes (DSE) are also common in many aridland plants and are hypothesized to perform similar roles as mycorrhizal fungi. [8]
Plants grown in sterile soils and growth media often perform poorly without the addition of spores or hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi to colonise the plant roots and aid in the uptake of soil mineral nutrients. [75] The absence of mycorrhizal fungi can also slow plant growth in early succession or on degraded landscapes. [76]
Plants are thought to be more distantly related to animals and fungi. However, in the same year as the International Society of Protistologists' classification was published (2005), doubts were being expressed as to whether some of these supergroups were monophyletic, particularly the Chromalveolata, [ 46 ] and a review in 2006 noted the lack ...
Exceptions are parasitic plants that have lost the genes for chlorophyll and photosynthesis, and obtain their energy from other plants or fungi. Most plants are multicellular, except for some green algae. Historically, as in Aristotle's biology, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi ...
Animals and fungi are also more closely related to amoebas than to plants, and plants are more closely related to the SAR supergroup of protists than to animals or fungi. [citation needed] Animals and fungi are both heterotrophs, unlike plants, and while fungi are sessile like plants, there are also sessile animals.
The names of some protists (called ambiregnal protists), because of their mixture of traits similar to both animals and plants or fungi (e.g., slime molds and flagellated algae like euglenids), have been published under either or both of the botanical and the zoological codes of nomenclature. [14] [15]