Syzygites is a monotypic genus in Zygomycota. The sole described species is Syzygites megalocarpus, which was the first fungus for which sex was reported and the main homothallic representative in the research that allowed for the classification of fungi as homothallic or heterothallic. It is also the fungus from which the term "zygospore" was coined.
GENUS
via GBIF
Syzygites is a monotypic genus in Zygomycota. The sole described species is Syzygites megalocarpus, which was the first fungus for which sex was reported and the main homothallic representative in the research that allowed for the classification of fungi as homothallic or heterothallic. It is also the fungus from which the term "zygospore" was coined.
==Morphology== thumb|Dichotomously branched sporangiophores of Syzygites megalocarpus viewed at 100x thumb|Syzygites megalocarpus sporagiospores at the tip of a sporangiophore viewed at 400x Syzygites megalocarpus produces phototropic, repeatedly dichotomously branched sporangiophores that terminate in globose, apophysate sporangia. Sporangiospores have a spinose wall, which is rare in Mucorales. Zygospores are pigmented, ornamented, and produced on equally sized suspensors. Due to the presence of carotenoids, the myceliuem can appear yellowish, though mature sporangia darken giving it a brownish appearance.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).