REVSYS: Taxonomic Revision in the Russulaceae, Fungi

乳菇属和红菇属是与森林树根共生的蘑菇属，这种共生关系被称为菌根。它们是昆虫和大型动物的重要饮食元素，许多物种在世界各地被捕捞以供人类食用，并作为一种重要的商品。世界各地命名的物种数量很多，鲁苏拉约有2000种，乳菇约有1200种，对于那些研究林业、土壤群落、生物多样性或民族植物学的人来说，这是一个分类学上的麻烦群体。怀俄明大学的史蒂文·米勒博士和他的同事们提出的这项研究的主要目标是更容易地识别这些蘑菇，并记录出现在关键热带森林中的物种。为此，他们将扩展现有网站，使之包括一个具有数字图像库链接的网上识别标志，提供一个可直接观察和比较一组分类群和特征的参考数字图像的中央位置，建立一个有效公布的名称和引文的网上可搜索数据库，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、马来西亚伯利兹和非洲喀麦隆发现的鲁苏拉蘑菇和乳菇，这些地区的真菌多样性还很少被探索。这项研究是可能的，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，它将产生关于鉴定这些蘑菇的新的、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。在大规模砍伐森林导致它们可能灭绝之前，这将导致对热带和温带森林中这些重要蘑菇的更多了解和理解。

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.