Evolution and Speciation in Fungi and Eukaryotic Biodiversity

Being sessiles like autotrophic plants and heterotrophics as animals, fungi are fascinating eukaryotes. In them, the need for external digestion has demanded surface expansion and limited tissues to 20% loss of commercial crops. Despite their ecological and economic importance, no university offers degree course in Mycology. For 2,056,907 eukaryotic species, this book elaborates the role played by environmental factors (i) spatial distribution, (ii) light-temperature, (iii) precipitation-liquid water and biological attributes, (iv) cellularity, (v) symmetry, (vi) clonality, (vii) sexuality, (viii) modality and (ix) motility that either accelerate or decelerate biodiversity. About 20 and 80% eukaryotes are aquatics and terrestrials. Decreasing light intensity and temperature reduce diversity from the equator toward the polar zones. Water availability also reduces the diversity from 5.4 – 65.5 species/km2 in tropical evergreen forests to < 0.0045 species/km2 in deserts and polar zones. Unicellularity and radial symmetry decelerate the diversity to < 2 and < 26%, respectively. Increase in tissue types from 200 in mammals reduce clonality from 100 to 0%. Strategies developed by eukaryotes reduce selfing by < 24% in plants and < 1% in metazoans.