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The Fungi of Australia form an enormous and phenomenally diverse group, occupying a huge range of freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats with many ecological roles, for example as saprobes, parasites and mutualistic symbionts of algae, animals and plants, and as agents of biodeterioration. Where plants produce, and animals consume, the fungi recycle, and as such they ensure the sustainability of ecosystems. Knowledge about the fungi of Australia is meagre. Little is known about aboriginal cultural traditions involving fungi, or about aboriginal use of fungi apart from a few species such as Blackfellow's bread (''Laccocephalum mylittae''). Humans who came to Australia over the past couple of centuries brought no strong fungal cultural traditions of their own. Fungi have also been largely overlooked in the scientific exploration of Australia. Since 1788, research on Australian fungi, initially by botanists and later by mycologists, has been spasmodic and intermittent. At governmental level, scientific neglect of Australian fungi continues: in the country's National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy for 2010-2030, fungi are mentioned only once, in the caption of one illustration,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Australia's Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2010-2030 )〕 and some states currently lack mycologists in their respective fungal reference collections. The exact number of fungal species recorded from Australia is not known, but is likely to be about 13,000.〔Pascoe, I.G. (1991). History of systematic mycology in Australia. ''History of Systematic Botany in Australasia.'' Ed. by: P. Short. Australian Systematic Botany Society Inc. pp. 259-264.〕 The CSIRO has published three volumes providing a bibliography of all Australian fungal species described. Volume 2A was published in 1997,〔T.W.May & A.E.Wood (1997) Fungi of Australia Volume 2A: Catalogue and Bibliography of Australian Macrofungi 1. Basidiomycota. CSIRO Publishing. ISBN 0-643-05929-6〕 and Volume 2B was published in 2003.〔T.W. May, J. Milne, S. Shingles & R.H. Jones (2003) Fungi of Australia Volume 2B: Catalogue and Bibliography of Australian Fungi 2 Basidiomycota p.p. & Myxomycota p.p. CSIRO Publishing. ISBN 0-643-06907-0〕 Unlike the Flora of Australia series they are bibliographic lists and do not contain species descriptions. The total number of fungi which actually occur in Australia, including those not yet discovered, has been estimated at around 250,000 fungal species, including about 5,000 mushrooms, of which roughly 5% have been described.〔 Knowledge of distribution, substrata and habitats is poor for most species, with the exception of common plant pathogens.〔May, T.W. 2001. Documenting the fungal biodiversity of Australasia: from 1800 to 2000 and beyond. ''Australian Systematic Botany'' 14: 329-356〕 One result of this poor knowledge is that it is often difficult or even impossible to determine whether a given fungus is a native species or an introduction. ==History== Early collections in Western Australia were made by James Drummond and Ludwig Preiss in the early to mid-19th Century. They sent their specimens to W.J. Hooker at Kew and Elias Magnus Fries respectively. John Burton Cleland conducted the first systematic review of Australian fungi in a landmark monograph of fungal specimens at the South Australian Herbarium. Comprising some 16,000 specimens, this included fungi from elsewhere in the country as well as South Australia. He was assisted by such people as Edwin Cheel, keeper of the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Leonard Rodway of Tasmania and Phyllis Clarke (later North), who provided some watercolour paintings. These three were honoured with at least one specific epithet of new species described by Cleland. This resulted in two comprehensive volumes (1934–35) on the larger fungi of South Australia, and was reprinted in 1976. These were reworked and published in 1997 as ''Larger Fungi of Southern Australia'' by contemporary mycologist Cheryl Grgurinovic, though funding only allowed the publication of a volume on larger fungi. Bruce Fuhrer and Tony Young, whose book was first published in 1982 and has been revised several times since, have been instrumental in promoting Australian fungi to the general public with popular books on fungi in Australia.〔Fuhrer B. (2005) A Field Guide to Australian Fungi. Bloomings Books. ISBN 1-876473-51-7〕 Published knowledge is augmented by locally produced guides in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fungi of Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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