How Is Mold the Same & Different From Plants & Animals?
- Molds are the common name for fungi that possess threadlike filaments (hyphea). These organisms are 2 to 10 microns in diameter, and live in groups called mycelia that resemble cotton when visible (when found as a single celled organism, they are in yeast form). They digest their food (dead organic material) externally, form spores to reproduce asexually, and have cell walls. Out of the 200,000 fungal species, 100,000 of those are mold species. Molds can be found in both freezing and near boiling environmental conditions, but thrive in moist environments.
- Animals are motile metazoans (multicellular animals with differentiated tissues) whose cells lack walls. There are roughly 1.2 million animals known to scientists today, 1 million being insects. Animals are consumers, they are incapable of producing their own food, and must seek nutrients necessary for survival by ingesting from external sources. Unlike fungi, animals ingest their food and digest the nutrients internally.
- Plants create their own food through an endosymbiotic (internal) relationship with chloroplasts (internal cells that absorb nutrients from the sun). They are multicellular organisms that are classified as producers, mostly providing food for other living things. They can reproduce sexually or asexually depending on the species.
- New evidence suggests that fungi share an evolutionary link with animals. Through comparative research into the cellular and protein structure between plants, animals and fungi, scientists have determined that plants developed separately from fungi and animals. The protein sequences of fungi are similar to animals, but both are far from similar to those of plants. In 1957, Boulter and Derbyshire compared 45 fungal species cytochrome structures to those of mammals and birds, and found them to be similar yet distinct from those found in plants.
- Animals and fungi lack the presence of chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are the cells that are responsible for the process of photosynthesis by which plants largely obtain the nutrition they need to survive. Fungi must excrete enzymes from their bodies into their surroundings, then absorb nutrients through their cell walls. There are some worms in the animal kingdom that must ingest their food in a similar absorptive (digestion at the surface of the organism) manner.