Fungi with heteroxenous life histories

Abstract

Heteroxenous (multiple host) life histories are characteristic of many groups of parasitic protista and animals, including Zoomastigina, Apicomplexa, Mesozoa, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Acanthocephala, Pentastomida, and Arthropoda. Parasitic fungi, including the Chytridiomycota and the Dikaryomycota (ascomycetes and basidiomycetes), may also have heteroxenous life histories and have many features in common with parasites from other groups. In spite of many conceptual similarities, the study of parasitic fungi has occurred in isolation, resulting in the creation of a separate vocabulary and literature. Many of the concepts developed by zoologists are useful to mycologists and allow examination of parasitic fungi from new perspectives. These new perspectives reveal that heteroxenous fungi are not only similar to heteroxenous protistans and animals but that they also have unique characteristics of their own. Chief among these is a high level of endocyclic asexual reproduction, a phenomenon promoting exponential increases of infections in definitive host populations. Heteroxeny appears to have a number of benefits including (i) increased lifetime reproductive success, (ii) increased transmission efficiency (iii) enhanced effectiveness in colonizing ephemeral or periodically appearing hosts and hosts occurring in low population densities, (iv) maintenance or enhancement of overdispersed frequency distributions in host populations, and (v) enhancement of genetic exchange through multiple dispersal events. Key words: fungi, heteroxenous, parasite, life histories.