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In the YouTube video Fungi: Death Becomes Them, Hank Green (2013) explains that

fungi emerged from protist about one million years ago. According to Green, there are about 1.5
million species of fungi on the earth, but unfortunately humans are only aware of about 100
thousand of them. Simon (2015) explains that fungi were discovered through DNA studies of
their existence one billion years ago. Simon goes to explain that about 500 hundred million
years ago, algae began to evolve from a sea-dwelling algae that then moved to and covered land.
Algae is known to be the ancestor to all land plants. Although fungi and plants are
interconnected through a feeding system called mycorrhizae, fungi are eukaryotes and plants are
terrestrial multicellular eukaryote.
According to Simon, fungi spends most of their time decomposing dead trees and animals
in to organic material, which plants thrive on. If it was not for the fungi many plants would not
even exist. For instance, the nutrients that plants take from the soil would not return if it was
being decomposed by fungi in order to create organic matter for them to survive. They do this
by storing powerful enzymes that break down complex molecules into lesser organic material,
which they then use to feed, grow, and reproduce. Unlike plant cell walls which is made from
cellulose, Green explains that the cell walls of fungi is supported by the nitrogenous
carbohydrate called chitin. According to Green, most multi-fungi have tiny networks of tubular
filaments called hyphae that allow them to grow through, and from within feed on to expand into
large organisms covering large areas of the earth.
Simon then explains that for a plant to survive, it uses photosynthesis to produce energy
from sunlight. However, they are different from their ancestor algae and other photosynthetic
organisms, as they have a structural adaptations that allow them to thrive on land. The plants
structures allows it to obtain resources from different sources: air and soil. Such structures

include shoot, root and vascular systems, pollen, egg, cuticle, leaves, and lignin. Over time,
plants have evolved from its ancestral green algae around 500 hundred million years ago,
nonvascular plants 475 million years, seedless vascular plants 425 million years, gymnosperms
360 million years, and finally angiosperms 140 million years.
Reference
Green, H. (2013, Aug 17). Fungi: death becomes them [video]. Khan Academy. Retrieved from
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/crash-course1/partner-topic-crash-coursebio-ecology/crash-course-biology/v/crash-course-biology-138
Simon, E. J. (2015). Biology: The Core (1st ed.). New England College: Pearson Education.

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