Phylogenomics unravels the early diversification of fungi
Our understanding of the eukaryote tree of life is continually improving, although the branching events at some of the deepest nodes remain elusive. The fungi are an ancient group of eukaryotes with a wide range of morphologies, life-history strategies, and ecological roles. While several recent phylogenomic analyses have been shown to be a powerful tool for uncovering even earliest diversifications, no study has yet examined the entire tree of fungi using a taxonomically comprehensive data set and suitable models of evolution. Here, we assembled a data set of 299 proteins from all recognised fungal groups for which genomic/transcriptomic data were available and subjected this to a battery of analyses, including tree inferences using site-heterogeneous mixture models and the Multi-Species Coalescent model. Tree topology was highly congruent and well supported, and any incongruence was found to result from an inability of some frequently used evolutionary models to model fast-evolving and heterogeneous sites. Our results provide higher resolution among early-branching lineages than previous studies, and shed light on hitherto highly contested evolutionary origins of the major fungal groups.