General Characteristics
Following are some of the important characteristics of fungi.
Habitat:
They occupy a wide range of habitats, aquatic, terrestrial and as parasites on plants and animals.
Mode of Life:
They can be parasites, saprotrophs or mutualists.
Size:
They range in size from the unicellular yeasts to the large toad stool.
Nutrition:
They lack chlorophyll, so they are non-photosynthetic. Thus, mode of nutrition is heterotrophic. Digestion takes place outside the body and nutrients are absorbed directly.
Cell Walls:
Cell walls are rigid containing chitin as fibrillar material. It has a high tensile strength, gives shape to the hyphae and prevents osmotic bursting of the cells. Chitin is more resistant to decay than cellulose and lignin present inn the plant cell wall.
