Dikarya is a subkingdom of Fungi that includes the phyla Ascomycota

Ascomycota

The Ascomycota are a Division/Phylum of the kingdom Fungi, and subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the Sac fungi. They are the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species...

 and Basidiomycota

Basidiomycota

Basidiomycota is one of two large phyla that, together with the Ascomycota, comprise the subkingdom Dikarya within the Kingdom Fungi...

, both of which in general produce dikaryon

Dikaryon

Dikaryon is from Greek, di meaning 2 and karyon meaning nut, referring to the cell nucleus.The dikaryon is a nuclear feature which is unique to some fungi, in which after plasmogamy the two compatible nuclei of two cells pair off and cohabit without karyogamy within the cells of the hyphae,...

s, may be filament

Hypha

A hypha is a long, branching filamentous structure of a fungus, and also of unrelated Actinobacteria. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium; yeasts are unicellular fungi that do not grow as hyphae.-Structure:A hypha consists of one or...

ous or unicellular, but are always without flagella. The Dikarya are most of the so called "higher fungi", but also include many anamorphic species that would have been classified as moulds in historical literature. Phylogenetically the two phyla regularly group together. In a 1998 publication, Thomas Cavalier-Smith

Thomas Cavalier-Smith

Professor Thomas Cavalier-Smith , FRS, FRSC, NERC Professorial Fellow, is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, at the University of Oxford...

 referred to this group as the Neomycota.

Phylogeny

The 2007 classification of Kingdom Fungi is the result of a large-scale collaborative research effort involving dozens of mycologists and other scientists working on fungal taxonomy

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

. It recognizes seven phyla

Phylum

In biology, a phylum The term was coined by Georges Cuvier from Greek φῦλον phylon, "race, stock," related to φυλή phyle, "tribe, clan." is a taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class. "Phylum" is equivalent to the botanical term division....

 within the Fungi, two of which—the Ascomycota and the Basidiomycota—are contained within a branch representing subkingdom Dikarya. The cladogram

Cladogram

A cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows ancestral relations between organisms, to represent the evolutionary tree of life. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters, DNA and RNA sequencing data and computational...

 depicts the major fungal taxa

Taxon

|thumb|270px|[[African elephants]] form a widely-accepted taxon, the [[genus]] LoxodontaA taxon is a group of organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement...

 and their relationship to opisthokont

Opisthokont

The opisthokonts or "Fungi/Metazoa group" are a broad group of eukaryotes, including both the animal and fungus kingdoms, together with the eukaryotic microorganisms that are sometimes grouped in the paraphyletic phylum Choanozoa...

 and unikont

Unikont

Unikonts are members of the Unikonta, a taxonomic group proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith.It includes amoebozoa, opisthokonts, and Apusozoa.-Clade:...

 organisms. The lengths of the branches in this tree are not proportional to evolutionary distances.

External links

• AFTOL classification at Dave Hibbett's site