REVSYS: Taxonomic Revision in the Russulaceae, Fungi

乳菇属和红菇属的物种是与森林树木的根部共生的蘑菇密切相关的属，这种共生被称为菌根。它们是昆虫和大型动物的重要饮食元素，许多物种在世界范围内被收获供人类消费，并作为重要商品。 全世界命名的物种数量很大，红菇属约有2000种，乳菇属约有1200种，对于那些从事林业、土壤群落、生物多样性或民族植物学研究的人来说，这是一个分类学上很麻烦的群体。怀俄明州大学的史蒂文米勒博士和他的同事们提出的研究的主要目标是更容易识别这些蘑菇，并记录发生在关键热带森林中的物种。 为此，他们将扩大现有的网站，包括一个网上识别码，并与数字图像库链接，提供一个集中地点，可直接观察和比较分类群和特征的一套参考数字图像，建立一个网上可搜索的有效公布名称和引文数据库，并扩大在线文献数据库。 他们还将调查和鉴定在多米尼加共和国、伯利兹、马来西亚和非洲的喀麦隆发现的红菇属和乳菇属蘑菇，这些地区的真菌多样性还很少被探索。这项研究之所以成为可能，是因为它代表了来自美国、欧洲和澳大利亚的专家之间强有力的国际合作。这项研究的重要性在于，它将产生关于这些蘑菇的识别的新的和更容易获得的知识，这反过来将为林业，生态学，生物多样性和民族植物学提供新的探索途径。这将导致更多的知识和了解这些重要的蘑菇在热带和温带森林之前，大规模砍伐森林可能导致灭绝。

Species in the genera Lactarius and Russula are closely related genera ofmushrooms found in symbiotic association with the roots of forest trees, an association known as mycorrhizal. They are important dietary elements for insects and larger animals and many species are harvested worldwide for human consumption and as an importantcommodity. The number of named species worldwide is large, approximately 2000 in Russula and 1200 in Lactarius, and it is a taxonomically troublesome group for thosedoing studies of forestry, soil communities, biodiversity, or ethnobotany. The primary goals of the proposed research by Dr. Steven Miller at the University of Wyoming and his colleagues are to make it easier to identify these mushrooms and to document the species that occur in critical tropical forests. To do so, they will expand an existing website to include a web-based identification key with links to a digital image library, provide a centralized location where a reference set of digital images of taxa and characters can be directly observed and compared, create a web-based searchable database of validly published names and citations, and expand the on-line literaturedatabase. They will also survey and identify the Russula and Lactarius mushrooms found in the Dominican Republic and Belize, Malaysia, and the Cameroons of Africa, areas little explored yet for fungal diversity.This research is possible because it represents a strong internationalcollaboration between experts from the United States, Europe and Australia. The importance of this research is that it will result in new and more accessible knowledge on identification of these mushrooms, which in turn will provide new avenues of exploration for forestry, ecology, biodiversity and ethnobotany. This will result in greater knowledge and understanding of these important mushrooms in both tropical and temperate forests before massive deforestation results in their likely extinction.