Question

Which of the following are characteristics of fungi?

Answer 1

Fungi are heterotrophic, needing an outside source of organic carbon for food. They use ezymatic digestion like animals but instead of an internal stomach they digest their food outside their bodies and absorb the digested nutrients, this makes them osmotrophs. They are the only Eukarya that can decompose cellulose or keratin. They use chitin as a structural element instead of keratin or cellulose.
Muticellular fungi exist as filamentous hyphae for most of their life forming the sexual fruiting bodies only when reproducing/dispersing. Like plants they are sessile so they must grow spores to move the next generation to another food source. Spores do not merge together but grow directly into haploid organisms.
Asexual reproduction:
Yeast are single celled Ascomycota fungi that reproduce by asexual budding usually (this is not binary division as with bacteria). Other asexually reproducing Ascomycete species grow condidia to disperse asexual spores. Asexual (mitotic) spores are produced by different species than sexual spores (meiotic).
Sexual reproduction:
Fungi sexually mate when two hyphae find and merge to become diploid.This allows meiosis at some point and produce sexual spores for dispersal.
The Ascomycota phylum also has species with sexually reproductive fruiting bodies that are 'sac mushrooms', which disperse their sexual spores in special pods or sac-like structures called asci: morel & truffle are edible examples.

Fungi are not vascular with internal methods of transport.

Fungi can have aerobic metabolisms as mushrooms but they can also have anaerobic metabolisms as yeast that give us fermentation.