Fungi, plants, and animals

Understand the idea

Fungi include yeasts, moulds, and mushrooms. They are eukaryotic, non-motile heterotrophs. They have a cell wall and make chitin. They do not photosynthesise. They reproduce with spores, sexually or asexually, and some are parasites. They have no embryo; a spore grows into the fungus.

Kingdom Plantae holds the plants: eukaryotic, multicellular autotrophs. Chlorophyll in plastids captures light. Cells have a wall and a large central vacuole. Plants do not walk. They reproduce sexually or by vegetative propagation. Roots, stems, and leaves divide jobs such as anchorage, support, and photosynthesis.

Kingdom Animalia is the largest of the five. Animals are multicellular eukaryotes without chlorophyll or a cell wall, so they must eat. Body plan splits them into phyla such as Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Arthropoda, Mollusca, Echinodermata, and Chordata.

What to remember

• Fungi: heterotrophs, spores, chitin, no chlorophyll.
• Plants: autotrophs, chlorophyll, wall, vacuole, non-motile.
• Animals: heterotrophs, no wall, no chlorophyll, many phyla.

Recap

After Monera and Protista, sort the rest by food and cell wall: fungi absorb, plants photosynthesise, animals ingest. Learn one clear example of each.