OK all you Biology experts. I need help with Fungus Life cycles!?

Question

I have a Biology exam on monday! I dont know how to memorize the whole lifecycle, how do I know what is important?
Chytridiomycota
Zygomycota
Basidiomycota
and
Ascomycota.
How do I pick the important parts? There is so much information in one lifecycle I cant get myself to know all of it...HELP!
THANK YOU!

Answer 1

Chytridiomycota is a division of the Fungi kingdom and contains only one class, Chytridiomycetes. The name refers to the chytridium (from the Greek, chytridion, meaning "little pot"): the structure containing unreleased spores. In older classifications, chytrid orders (except the recently established Neocallimasticales and Spizellomycetales) were placed in the Class Phycomycetes under the Subdivision Myxomycophyta of the Kingdom Fungi. Also, in an older and more restricted sense (not used here), the term "chytrids" referred just to those fungi in the order Chytridiales.

The chytrids are the most primitive of the fungi and are mostly saprobic (degrading chitin and keratin). Many chytrids are aquatic (mostly found in freshwater). There are approximately 1,000 chytrid species, in 127 genera, distributed among 5 orders.). Some species are unicellular.

Zygomycota, or zygote fungi, are a division of fungi. The name of the division comes from zygosporangia, resistant structures formed during sexual reproduction. There are approximately 600 species of zygomycetes known. They are mostly terrestrial in habitat, living in soil or on decaying plant or animal material. Zygomycete hyphae are coenocytic, with septa only where gametes are formed.

A common example of a zygomycete is black bread mold (Rhizopus stolonifer). It spreads over the surface of bread or other food sources, sending hyphae inward to absorb nutrients. In its asexual phase it develops bulbous black sporangia at the tips of upright hyphae, developing hundreds of haploid spores inside that are dispersed into the air.

Some zygomycetes disperse their spores in a more precise manner than simply allowing them to drift aimlessly on air currents. Pilobolus, a fungus which grows on animal dung, bends its sporangium-bearing hyphae towards light and then "fires" them with an explosive squirt of high-pressure cytoplasm. Sporangia can be launched as far as 2m, placing them far away from the dung and hopefully on vegetation which will be eaten by an herbivore, eventually to be deposited as dung elsewhere.

The Zygomycota are generally placed at the base of the fungal phylogenetic tree, having diverged from other fungi after chytrids. However, the monophyly of zygomycetes themselves is not certain. Order Glomales was removed in 2002 and elevated to Division Glomeromycota due their lack of zygospore formation, among other pieces of evidence.
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The Division Basidiomycota is a large taxon within the Kingdom Fungi that includes those species that produce spores in a club-shaped structure called a basidium. Essentially the sibling group of the Ascomycota, it contains some 22,300 distinct species (37% of the described fungi). The Basidiomycota was traditionally divided into Homobasidiomycetes (the true mushrooms); and Heterobasidiomycetes (the rusts and smuts). The Basidiomycota is now thought to comprise three major clades, the Hymenomycotina (Hymenomycetes; mushrooms), the Ustilaginomycotina (Ustilaginomycetes; true smut fungi), and the Teliomycotina (Urediniomycetes; rusts).

Basidiomycota include both unicellular (some yeasts) and multicellular forms and sexual and asexual species. They occur in terrestrial and aquatic environments (including the marine environment) and can be characterized by bearing sexual spores on basidia, having a long-lived dikaryon, and usually showing clamp connections.

Members of the Division Ascomycota are known as the Sac Fungi and are fungi that produce spores in a distinctive type of microscopic sporangium called an ascus (Greek for a "bag" or "wineskin"). This monophyletic grouping was formerly known as the Ascomycetae, or Ascomycetes, and is an extremely significant and successful group of organisms (12,000 species in 1950), accounting for some 75% of all described fungi.[1][2] Included are most of the fungi that combine with algae and sometimes cyanobacteria to form lichens. The majority of fungi that lack morphological evidence of sexual reproduction are placed here or in the Deuteromycota. Better known examples of sac fungi are yeasts, morels, truffles, and Penicillium. The majority of plant-pathogenic fungi belong to this group, or the Deuteromycota. Species of ascomycetes are also popular in the laboratory. Sordaria fimicola, Neurospora crassa and several species of yeasts are used in many genetics and cell biology experiments.

An exception to the structure described above are ascomycetous yeasts, which are secondarily unicellular.

Answer 2

Haha you at UC Merced too?