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Commonwealth University of PA

BIOL 431 / 531: Mycology

This guide supports Dr. Overton's research assignments.

Index Fungorum and Mycobank

Index Forum 

  • Index Fungorum is an international project to index all formal names (scientific)  in the fungus kingdom. (As of 2015). The project is based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, one of three partners along with Landcare Research and the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Index Fungorum is one of three nomenclatural repositories recognized by the IMI Nomenclature Committee for Fungi; the others are MycoBank and Fungal Names.
  • Names with blue links are names for which there is no taxonomic opinion available, red links are misapplied names (names which have been used in a sense which is different from that as represented by the type of the name), green links are names where a taxonomic opinion has been expressed in Species Fungorum and lead directly to the appropriate page.
    • **Your sources will be identified once you link through the links: many of the citations are to journals (and books) not held by LHU Libraries. It is important to follow through on the GREEN links (find the best match to your Dictionary of the Fungi entry)

MycoBank 

  • MycoBank is an online database, documenting new mycological names and combinations, eventually combined with descriptions and illustrations.
  • Each new name ("novelty"), after being screened by nomenclatural experts and found in accordance with the ICN (International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants), is allocated a unique MycoBank number before the new name has been validly published. This number then can be cited by the naming author in the publication where the new name is being introduced. Only then, this unique number becomes public in the database. This numbering system can help solve the problem of knowing which names have been validly published and in which year.

Websites Classification & Nomenclature

A number of Web resources, like the following, are trying to create detailed species information for large groups of species, and some even are attempting to name, describe, and classify all forms of life. You may have to use more than one site to locate taxonomic information on your fungi.