What are aquatic fungi?
photo creditsAquatic fungi spend their entire lifecycle in aquatic habitats and include specimens from all the fungal tree of life. They are a highly diverse group with approximately 5900 described species, living in most ecosystems studied so far, from freshwater (3800 species) to seawater (2100 species). However, the real diversity of aquatic fungi would probably be much higher, ranging from thousands to more than 1 million. This “fungal dark matter” becomes more and more visible thanks to methodological advances, in particular in molecular techniques.