It causes a white rot in a diverse array of woody substrates, and the fruit bodies grow as a crust on the surface of the decaying wood.

Skeletocutis is primarily distinguished from similar genera of wood-rotting fungi by microscopic features, especially by the sausage-shaped to ellipsoid spores, and spiny crystals covering certain hyphae in the pore tissue.

The genus was circumscribed by Czech mycologists František Kotlaba and Zdenek Pouzar in 1958, with Skeletocutis amorpha as the type species.

When caps are present, their colour is typically white, cream-pink, or lilac, although the fruit body tends to discolour somewhat when dry.

It is often found fruiting in association with other fungi, including Fomitopsis rosea, Crustoderma dryinum, Leptoporus mollis, and Phlebia centrifuga.

A Finnish study found that it fruited most frequently in the third stage (medium decay) of wood decomposition of Norway spruce (Picea abies).

In this stage, which occurs about 20–40 years after the death of the plant, the decay penetrates more than 3 cm (1.2 in) into the wood, while the core is still hard.

[9] S. carneogrisea and S. kuehneri are successor species that grow on the dead fruit bodies of the polypores Trichaptum abietinum and T. fuscoviolaceum.

Its natural habitat is threatened by deforestation and loss of thick fallen logs typical of old-growth forests.

[17] The genus was circumscribed by Czech mycologists František Kotlába and Zdeněk Pouzar in 1958 with Skeletocutis amorpha (originally described as Polyporus amorphus by Elias Magnus Fries in 1815[18]) as the type and only species.

Although Sidera is placed in a different order (Hymenochaetales), it shares many characteristic features with Skeletocutis, including whitish resupinate basidiocarps (in many species) with small pores, and narrow skeletal hyphae.

In contrast with Skeletocutis, however, the hyphae in Sidera comprising the dissepiment edge are smooth or covered with only a few faceted crystal clusters.

[25] In 1963, Polish mycologist Stanislaw Domanski circumscribed the genus Incrustoporia (typified by Poria stellae) to contain several polypores featuring encrusted hyphae at the dissepiments.

[31] The inclusion of several monomitic species by Alix David in 1982 (S. azorica, S. jelicii, S. portcrosensis and S. subsphaerospora)[32] was controversial,[33] as mycologists Leif Ryvarden and Robert Lee Gilbertson (1993, 1994)[34][35] and Annarosa Bernicchia (2005)[36] transferred them to or accepted them in Ceriporiopsis.