Fungal Evolution: Aquatic–Terrestrial Transitions
The coevolution of plants and fungi is of key importance to the development of life on land. Much of our understanding of this long-shared evolutionary history comes from (1) the study of living species, in particular through molecular phylogenetics and (2) direct fossil evidence of plant–fungus interactions and fungal diversity in general. However little is known about the aquatic–terrestrial transitions in fungal evolution. In this article we discuss some hypotheses that have arisen from molecular data and the fossil record, and we highlight particular traits that can be helpful to understand the origin of fungi and their evolutionary history.