Do members of the fungi kingdom photosynthesize?

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1129562

2026-04-14 20:31

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Most commonly, fungi are saprophytic in nutrition, i.e., they derive nutrition from dead and decaying organic matter.

BUT:

Lichens are a form of fungus that host cyanobacteria to conduct photosynthesis... except the cyanobacteria have evolved to be dependent on their fungal hosts, and therefore are symbiotes.

Plants, likewise, do not directly conduct photosynthesis. Their chloroplasts are simply cyanobacteria that have evolved to become completely dependent on their plant hosts.

So, really, lichens are effectively photosynthetic in the same sense plants are. But are a composite organism composed of a fungus (nonphotosynthetic) and cyanobacteria (photosynthetic), instead of a single organism

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