Basidiomycete

The result is that over all these initiatives in classification have hovered the spectres of basidiomycete, and especially ascomycete, taxonomy.

The majority of macroscopic fleshy fungi are basidiomycetes. Basidiomycetes produce spores on a basidium, the basic feature that separates them from other groups of fungi. Some of the basidiomycetes forcibly discharge their spores from the basidia, which remain after spore discharge. Other basidiomycete groups release their spores by collapse of the basidia, which are not present in the mature fruiting body.

Among basidiomycetes there are classic examples of farming interactions in which Old World termites cultivate a monophyletic group of fungi and New World leaf-cutting ants cultivate two distinct cultivar groups (Currie et al. 2003; Munkacsi et al. 2004; Little and Currie 2008).