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Of all the five major kingdoms of living organisms on earth, the fungi certainly contain some of the most bizarre and fascinating species. Mycology is the study of fungi, and much of the current research in this field is at the molecular level. There are about 100,000 known species of mushrooms, rusts, molds, mildews, stinkhorns, puffballs, truffles and other organisms assigned to the Kingdom Fungi, and hundreds of new species are described each year. They come …

…upon the type of spores in these fruiting bodies, fungi are placed into different classes such as the Ascomycetes and Basidiomycetes. The number of spores produced by these fruiting bodies (technically referred to as ascocarps or basidiocarps) can be astronomical. It has been estimated that a single basketball-sized puffball (Calvatia gigantea) could produce enough spores in just two generations to theoretically produce a total volume of puffballs seven times the size of the planet earth.