Phyla are taxonomic ranks below kingdom and above class. There are 38 animal phyla, with Arthropoda and Nematoda being the most successful. Only three new animal phyla have been discovered in the past century. There are 12 plant phyla, with flowering plants being the most successful. There are six phyla of mushrooms, including chytrids, imperfect fungi, zygomycetes, glomeromycota, sac fungi, and basidiomycota.
In biology, a phylum is a division of organism (taxonomic rank) below kingdom (such as Animalia) and above class (such as mammals). There are 38 animal phyla, with nine phyla – Mollusca, Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Arthropoda, Echinodermata and Chordata – making up the vast majority of all animals. The phyla Arthropoda (arthropods) and Nematoda (nematodes) are the most successful, with the former containing between 1 and 10 million species and the latter containing between 80,000 and 1 million species. Animal phyla are generally classified into two groups: deuterostomes and protostomes, distinguished by differences in embryonic development.
Only three new animal phyla have been discovered in the past century, although over ten animals previously placed in other phyla have been recognized as their own phyla. The different phyla have fundamental differences in their body plans and each constitute a monophyletic group, meaning that the phylum consists of all descendants of a common ancestor and none who are not. Biological groups that may consist of numerous phyletic groups, such as worms, are called polyphyletic. The evolution of biological taxonomy has generally been to strictly define one phylum from another based on clearly describable physical differences and genetic similarities.
There are 12 plant phyla: hornworts, mosses, liverworts, clubmosses and spikemosses, ferns and horsetails, seed ferns, conifers, cycads, ginko and maidenhair ferns, gnetophytes, and flowering plants. Among these, flowering plants are today the most successful, constituting the majority of terrestrial plants. This is partly due to human help: flowering plants are the only plant phylum that produces fruit. Before the evolution of humans, flowering plants were still very successful, but thanks to cooperation with arthropods. The coevolution of flowering plants and arthropods is one of the great success stories of biological history.
There are six phyla of
mushrooms
. Chytrids are tiny primitive fungi with flagella; imperfect fungi are fungi without sexual reproduction; and zygomycetes, small fungi with spherical spore capsules, including bread mold. The phylum glomeromycota includes fungi found in the roots of nearly all plants; sac fungi and basidiomycota, or “higher fungi,” including all fungi.
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