<p class="ZootaxaTitle">Hurdles in fungal taxonomy: Effectiveness of recent methods in discriminating taxa

Abstract

The fungal kingdom is estimated to comprise between 2.2 to 3.8 million species with only about 7% named and classified. Novel biochemical, physiological and molecular techniques have been utilized to improve the systematics of fungal taxa and estimates of their diversity. Multidisciplinary approaches should be used for resolving species and higher taxa of the fungi. However, even with all the benefits of the new techniques, they are also providing unclear results and taxonomic instability. Taxonomists should be aware of these issues and should follow pragmatic approaches. In order to overcome these taxonomic challenges, cooperation and communication among mycologists worldwide are crucial for the study of fungal diversity.

Additions to Phaeosphaeriaceae (Pleosporales): Elongaticollum gen. nov., Ophiosphaerella taiwanensis sp. nov., Phaeosphaeriopsis beaucarneae sp. nov. and a new host record of Neosetophoma poaceicola from Musaceae

“…Traditionally, morphology-based identification was the main means for identifying Phaeosphaeriaceae species (Barr 1979(Barr , 1992Tomilin 1993). However, species identification has been revolutionized by the application of molecular based approaches incorporating DNA sequence data in Phaeosphaeriaceae (Phookamsak et al 2014(Phookamsak et al , 2017Tennakoon et al 2016;Wanasinghe et al 2018;Bakhshi et al 2019;Chethana et al 2020;Hyde et al 2020). Phaeosphaeriaceae species are adapted to a wide range of ecological environments and are present in soils, fresh and marine habitats and cause infections in humans (Yuan 1994;Phookamsak et al 2014Phookamsak et al , 2017Ahmed et al 2017;Maharachchikumbura et al 2019;Valenzuela-Lopez et al 2019).…”

Mushroom Nutrition as Preventative Healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Globally, there are up to 5 million species of mushrooms, of which around 1000 of these species can be found in SSA, and as there is no single tool for their identification, only some 7% have been accurately classified [40]. The poor discovery, identification, and certification of edible and medicinal species of mushrooms in SSA retarded its potential use in nutrition, as tonic, and as medicine [41,42].…”

Metabarcoding of insect-associated fungal communities: a comparison of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large-subunit (LSU) rRNA markers

“…For these studies to succeed, accurate and reliable fungal identifications are essential. However, identifications of fungi are challenging due to their cryptic morphology and incomplete taxonomy, with only 3–8% of fungal species described so far ( Hibbett et al 2016 ; Kandawatte Wedaralalage et al 2020 ). Conventional studies of fungal communities have been conducted by isolating and culturing the fungi associated with insect specimens ( Batra 1963 ), but this overlooked many unculturable species.…”