Interesting Ascomycete Internet article

[Ditiola]

There is an very informative article on ascomycetes at:

Chapter 4bxe Ascomycete survey



Peter

[fairplay]

That looks brilliant - and in colour too
Also easy to read, but I'd prefer to print it out and read a hard copy.

Meantime, I've copied and pasted it into an email to myself so that I can find it again. Mind you, I should have learnt most of this and more when I attended the BMS Ascomycete Foray and Workshop last year.

Cheers Peter.

Neil.

[Ditiola]

There is some more Ascomycete stuff if you navigate to the home page. I have leant quite a bit already but there is only so much I can take in at a time, so will have to dip in over several occasions

I sense a general reluctance these days to newcomers to mycology in spending their hard-earned cash on expensive mycological books so without books internet information (including WAB) is the only way they are going to learn. The trouble is much of the information is fragmented across a huge range of scatted sites and of very varying quality and usefulness.

Peter

[waxcap]

Thanks for sharing that link Peter. That's a very good resource.

Dave

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by waxcap

. . . . That's a very good resource.

Dave

Indeed: but to borrow a phrase from Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop "Up to a point" . . . .

The taxonomy of the Ascomycota has changed somewhat since this was clearly put together and readers should be aware of that; for example the order Helotiales is back, and the orders Diatrypales and Sphaeriales have disappeared (their members moving into the Xylariales); to be fair this is obliquely hinted at at the top of the paper and there is mention of "Traditional Orders"

of the four images of Trochila ilicina I'm not convinced that the top right one is actually this species (I suspect it could be anamorphic Phacidiostroma)

the key to Erysiphales (with its attendant identification exercise) I would now ignore - a revision of the order has shown that, rather counter-intuitively, the appendages on the chasmothecia are of limited taxonomic importance; for example the genus Uncinula has disappeared entirely with its former members redistributed into Erysiphe, Sawadaea, Parauncinula and Pleochaeta

for most readers these are minor quibbles which should not get in the way of an appreciation of the fantastic variety to be found in the Ascomycota; it is nice to see such good coverage of those parasitic on invertebrates for example, and the illustrations are generally of a very high standard and there is appropriate stress placed upon the importance of anamorphic ('imperfect') states

Chris

[diggleken]

Thanks Peter, its in favourites now.
Cheers
Ken