Thursday, February 11, 2010

What exactly are FUNGI, and how is it that they can eat dead wood with their tentacles(decomposers)?

Also are Mushrooms their ';flowers';?





I am just wondering about there feeding process and how it works.





I hope you can help me.


Thanks in Advance, English is not my mother tongue.What exactly are FUNGI, and how is it that they can eat dead wood with their tentacles(decomposers)?
Fungi are living organisms that possess a distinct nucleus (eukaryotic) and which reproduce by forming spores, instead of seeds. Fungi also do not produce chlorophyll; this means that they cannot manufacture sugars, so they must obtain their nutrients externally from other organisms. They do this by absorbing food materials from either living organisms, as parasites, or from dead organic matter, as saprobes. Fungi are simple in structure compared to most plants. The ';body'; or thallus of most fungi is a long, slender, tubular structure called a ';hypha';, but in a few fungi (the yeasts) the thallus consists of a single cell. Although some fungi, such as the mushrooms, are large enough to be seen easily, most fungi are microscopic in size and must be observed with the aid of a microscope.What exactly are FUNGI, and how is it that they can eat dead wood with their tentacles(decomposers)?
Fungi are a separate lifeform, just like animals and plants.





They ';eat'; wood by secreting digestive chemicals onto it, and absorbing the released nutrients and energy.





Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of some (but not all) fungi, and they contain spores. They are analagous to say, a tomato or an apple, which contain seeds.
The mushrooms are the fruiting bodies, slightly similar to flowers. They release spores which do not have to fuse with another to grow, they do not have any food store like a seed. The spore is a single cell and their cells divide in a way that is different from other organisms, thats what sets them apart from plants and animals.





For most of the time they are an interwoven tissue of branching threads(hypha), their cell walls are made of chitin, the same material insects make their skeletons from. The attack the wood with a powerful acid that breaks down cellulose but not their chitin.





There are many other types of fungi that feed on other things (for example petroleum) but i won't go into detail.

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