Research Coordination Networks in Biological Sciences: A Phylogeny for Kingdom Fungi

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0090301Blackwell, Spatafora, Taylor Mycologists embraced molecular phylogenetics early, and some of the techniques pioneered for use with fungi have proved equally useful in other organisms, including plants, such as the nuclear ribosomal Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) regions. During the last decade great progress has been made toward constructing a single phylogenetic classification of fungi, but the current data sets rely upon DNA sequences from only 800 or so fungal taxa, out of an estimated 80,000 described species of fungi, or about 1% representation. Furthermore, some mycologists have argued that there may be over a million species of fungi still to describe, especially from tropical and other regions of the world poorly surveyed for microbial and fungal diversity. This Research Coordination Network (RCN) award will facilitate expanded interactions among current workers in the field and help to attract new researchers to the effort, to construct a phylogeny of the Kingdom Fungi, in turn to facilitate the discovery, identification, and incorporation into a taxonomic framework of novel fungal taxa across all four major phyla of fungi, Chytridiomycetes, Zygomycetes, Basidiomycetes, and Ascomycetes (and their asexual and lichenized relatives). A non-exclusive, gender (10 women of 31 named participants) and age (27-80 years) diverse group of mycologists will create the research and education network, to execute three goals: (1) promote fungal phylogenetics; (2) make available identification aids for fungi; and (3) provide a phylogeny and educational materials to mycologists and teachers. Participants will meet at least twice a year in each of the five years of funding to develop a set of exemplar taxa for phylogenetic analysis, choose morphological and molecular characters for study, discuss analytical methods appropriate to these characters, foster cooperation and collaboration for collection and vouchering of large data sets (including with European colleagues in the FungalNet consortium), and coordinate educational initiatives. Efforts are underway to bring increased numbers of postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and undergraduates into the enterprise, along with foreign colleagues. Rapid communication will be accomplished by electronic means and through public access to a web site established for the RCN activity. Phylogenetic research on fungi will benefit numerous fields like biomedical and pharmaceutical research, animal and plant pathology, food science, bioprospecting, and environmental analysis and monitoring.