page_title: Zoopagomycotina
section_title: Evolutionary relationships
hierarchical_section_title: Zoopagomycotina / Evolutionary relationships
caption_attribution_description: English: Zygomycota Phylogeny
context_page_description: The Zoopagomycotina are a subdivision of the fungal division Zygomycota sensu lato. It contains 5 families and 20 genera. Relationships among and within subphyla of Zygomycota are poorly understood, and their monophyly remains in question, so they are sometimes referred to by the informal name zygomycetes.
  Zoopagomycotina are microscopic and are typically obligate parasites of other zygomycete fungi and of microscopic soil animals such as nematodes, rotifers and amoebae. Some species are endoparasites that live mostly within the bodies of their hosts and only exit the host when they are producing spores. Other species are ectoparasites that live outside of the host body but produce specialized organs called haustoria that penetrate inside of the host body to capture host nutrients. Similar haustoria are found in biotrophic plant, animal and fungal pathogens in several other major fungal lineages.
  Like most other zygomycete fungi, the Zoopagomycotina have cell walls containing chitin and have coenocytic hyphae. Their vegetative body consists of a simple, branched or unbranched thallus.
context_section_description: Although great strides have been made in resolving the evolutionary relationships among many lineages of fungi, it has been challenging to resolve relationships within and among zygomycetes. For example, the uncertain grouping of Zoophagus insidians with the Kickxellomycotina.
  Resolving a well-supported monophyly of the Zoopagomycotina has been particularly challenging for several main reasons:
  1) most species of Zoopagomycotina are microscopic and challenging to observe,
  2) most species of Zoopagomycotina cannot be grown separately from their host organisms in axenic culture, so obtaining pure DNA for molecular studies is challenging, and
  3) based on ribosomal DNA sequences, species of Zoopagomycotina may have undergone accelerated evolution, so grouping may be skewed by long-branch attraction (LBA) and a high frequency of parallel evolutionary changes.
caption: Phylogeny of Zygomycota
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