What are “imperfect” fungi?
Any fungus that has no known meiotic or sexual state is placed in the deuteromycetes group for convenience. “deuteromycetes” or Fungi Imperfecti, have no known sexual state in their life cycle. Most of these have affinities to Ascomycota When the teleomorph is discovered, the technically correct name for the fungus is that of the teleomorph. Around 1680 genera and 17,000 species classifed here. The large majority of these fungi are terrestrial, and are either saprobes or parasites of plants; relatively few are parasites of animals Some characteristics used in identification of deuteromycetes: The most common method of asexual reproduction in fungi is by means of spores, a general term for dissemination and resting structures in fungi. Fungal spores exhibit a wide variability in coloration, surface sculpturing, size, shape, number of cells, cellular arrangement, and the manner in which they are borne on the mycelium. All, or most, of these features are used for identification of genera
