Gasteroid

History

This convenient division continued to be used for the next 150 years or so, although by the middle of the twentieth century it had become evident that Gasteromycetes was an artificial class (bringing together a miscellany of unrelated species) and not a natural one. In a 1995 study of British species, by Pegler et al. noted that "these fungi represent an heterogeneous assemblage, a mixture of forms which are derived from various lineages.... [they] can be collectively referred to as gasteroid fungi, but they cannot be classified as a single group." DNA-based systematic research has confirmed the diversity of the gasteroid fungi; According to a 2011 estimate, gasteroid fungi comprise about 8.4% of the known Agaricomycetes.