These fungi are all biotrophicmutualists. Most employ the arbuscular mycorrhizal method of nutrient exchange with plants. They produce large spores with thousands of nuclei.
Glomerales fungi were thought to have reproduced clonally for several hundred million years and are therefore an ancient asexuallineage. However, homologs of 51 meioticgenes, including seven genes specific for meiosis, were found to be conserved in the genomes of four Glomus species. Thus it now appears that these supposedly ancient asexual fungi may be capable of meiosis and perhaps also of a cryptic sexual or parasexual cycle.