- Email: [email protected]
Key links for field mycologists
Field Mycology Volume 2(4), October 2001
KEY LINKS FOR FIELD MYCOLOGISTS Paul F. Hamlyn 24 Tanfield Road, East Didsbuty, Manchester M20 5GF. [email protected]> Searching the WorldWide Web he dynamic nature of the Internet together with its vast range of resources poses a major challenge to anybody searching for information. Web pages are frequently revised and can change in content and appearance sometimes overnight. In addition, new sites are appearing all the time and old ones may disappear or move to a new address. Search engines often throw up thousands of links to a given set of keywords and have the limitation that an excellent site will not be listed if it has not been registered with the database being queried. Following the links from one Web site to other sites can often lead to useful sources of information. However, research on the Internet can take hours of work and it is very frustrating when the results are less than fruitful. Hopefully, new search technologies and the introduction of XML will lead to a considerable improvement in the precision of Web searches within the next five years (Butler, 2000). When I carried out a keyword search for fungus on Google it found some 164,000 Web page matches illustrating just how much material of potential interest to mycologists is already available on the Internet. The most complete list of mycology resources can be found at the WWW Virtual Library of Mycology. The site consists of several pages containing hundreds of links but a major advantage is that it can be searched in isolation from the Web as a whole. For this article, I have attempted to identify and organise a much smaller selection of links that are likely to be of interest to field mycologists in the UK. I have not included the URLs for Web sites reviewed in this paper to save space and many will probably change over the next few months anyway. They are all listed at
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Local Recording Groups Several recording groups in the UK are now online and their pages can provide a wealth of information. For example, North West Fungus Group (NWFG) has been on-line for almost five years (Hamlyn & Cook, 1996) and includes selected articles from the NWFG newsletter such as the often quoted paper by Robin Dean on fungal microscopy. Many new members have joined NWFG using the on-line membership form and this in itself is a good reason for having a Web presence. Members of the NWFG have been keen to set up their own sites on various aspects of mycology. Mike Walton, editor of the NWFG Newsletter, has scanned and placed on-line the full text and illustrations of severalVictorian books about fungi. John Taylor’s Web pages on ‘Recording Fungi in North West England’ include detailed records of fungi recorded in the region since 1996 and a list of the most frequently recorded fungi seen on field trips since 1975. John also periodically produces a useful set of notes covering recent publications and other issues relating to the identification, recording and ecology of fungi. Creating a Web site to advertise the activities of ydur own group is not difficult (Hamlyn, 1997) especially since it is now possible to create Web pages directly from programs such as Microsoft Word. However, if y?u don’t have the time to design and upload one yourself, can provide this service for free. Please visit the site for more information. Keys A number of keys are now available on-line for evaluation by field mycologists. Generally they relate to specific genera and can be downloaded onto your computer for routine use. On a more ambitious scale Jens Petersen and Thomas L;ess~e have developed MycoKey as a synoptic key for the determination of fungal genera. The free on-line version includes 180 genera and about 750 illustrated species of agarics from Northern Europe. It is planned to launch a complete version cover140
Field Mycology Volume 2(4), October 2001 ing all genera of sexual fungi forming fruitbodies on CD-ROM by 200 1.
Cultivation Kits If you want to grow fungi rather than just identifying them, mushroom cultivation kits are now available for several edible species and can be ordered on-line from U K suppliers. Fungi Perfecti (Olympia, USA) stock a wide range of mushroom-growing accessories and cultures. They also run training courses on growing gourmet mushrooms (Hamlyn & Temple, 1997). However, I would not recommend buying preinoculated kits from the United States due to the high postage costs.
Microscopy Microscopy-UK describes itself as the undisputed home of microscopy on the Web and is an excellent resource for detailed information about microscopy. The site has links to suppliers of microscopic equipment such as Brunel and also publishes a free monthly Web magazine called Micscape. Micscape was first published in November 1995 and now there are over 400 articles on-line. Several recent articles have reported on the use of relatively cheap webcams for photomicrography. While not as good as a 35mm photograph, the images appear to be quite acceptable and there are no worries about the cost of film and development. If you already own a PC and a microscope, and want to keep electronic records of your microscope slides, this seems like a good way to get started. Why not put your best pictures on-line so that we can all have a look at them? Other Sites Other notable U K resources include distribution maps of selected species from the BMS Foray Records Database, the Wild Mushroom Pickers’ Code of Conduct from the BMS Web site and some endangered species of fungi and lichens on the Plantlife Web site. The mycology section of the RBG site (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) gives details of current activities. For example, work has started on the first checklist and database of the British and Irish Basidiomycetes. The threeyear project has received funding from conservation and other bodies. The list will not only be published in book format, but will also be maintained as an actively updated database avail-
able for consultation through the Internet. More details can be found in the April 2000 issue of Kew Scientist, an on-line newsletter that is produced twice a year in Portable Document Format (PDF). You don’t have to read the newsletter on-line since PDF files can be downloaded to your computer. Instead of leftclicking with your mouse on the PDF link to open it, right-click on the link. Then click on the option in the pop-up menu that says ‘Save Link As’ or ‘Save Target As’ to save the P D F file to your hard drive [or if using a Macintosh click and hold on the link and move down the drop-down menu which will appear and select “save to disk” - Ed.]. P D F files are quite large so this may take a few minutes. There are many other excellent sites around the world but it is impossible to draw attention to anything but a handful of them in this article. The first worthy of mention is Mycoinfo which describes itself as the world’s first mycology ejournal. Mycoinfo includes a wide spectrum of information about fungi on a well-planned site, its creators having a solid understanding of both mycology and Web site design. As you might expect there are numerous pictures of fungi from all over the world on the Web but sourcing the picture for a particular species is not always easy. Fortunately, Flemming Larsen has already done this for us by providing a site containing nearly 1600 images linked directly to their original URL. Many Universities host mycology sites such as the one by Tom Volk, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. Although biased towards North America, the site contains much useful information about fungi. A ‘fungus of the month’ section introduced in January 1997 ensures that the site is regularly updated. While there is a lot of good information on the World Wide Web, care has to be taken regarding the reliability of any material from this source. It is a strength but also a weakness of the Internet that almost anyone can put anything on-line. In doing so, however, they bypass the advantages of traditional publication such as editorial and peer review. This does not make the information invalid but it does mean that you have to take care to check its reliability and credibility. You can tell a lot about the authenticity of a page by finding out all you can about its author or publisher. Try to find out if the author is the original creator of
141
Field Mycology Volume 2(4), October 200 1 Hamlyn, P.F. & Cook, R. (1996). North West Fungus Group goes on-line. Mycologist lO(4): 177-179. Hamlyn, P.F. (1997). Creating a mycological site on the Internet. Mycologist 11 (1): 23-26. Hamlyn, P.F. &Temple, J. (1997). Growing gourmet mushrooms - the Stamets seminars. Mycologist 1l(4): 157-1 58.
the information, his or her experience, what institution (company, university, etc.) if any supports the information and when it was created or last updated. Happy surfing!
References Butler, D. (2000). Souped-up search engines. Nature 405: 112-1 15.
BOOK REVIEW ATLAS DES CORTINAIRES Les Cortinaires Hmnuloides - Hors-serie No. 1 A. Bidaud, I?. Moenne-Loccoz, P. Reumaux avec la collaboration du Docteur R. Henry. Editions Federation Mycologique DauphineSavoie, 1997. Available from: Madame Catherine ROUPIOZ - MARLIOZ, 74270 Frangy, France. [No ISBN] 54 colour plates plus text. Price 450 F.
T
here are some works which are a delight to review because of their quality, others which are plainly awful and those which by their enormous scale and complexity almost defy adequate review. This volume, and its nine companions, all fall into the last category. All of them with the unexplained exception of this recent, special, bound volume follow a similar format consisting of loose-leaf colour plates with an accompanying booklet of descriptive text and line drawings. Cortinarius will never be an easy genus to identify or even for different mycologists to agree on taxonomically and nomenclaturally. The large numbers of taxa, where macroscopic differences - particularly subtle colour variations are of great importance in differentiation, their long history of varied interpretation by different authors and lastly their often irregular to rare occurrence in nature, all combine to frustrate a clear analysis. In recent years Cortinarius has benefited from a huge surge of interest with numerous publications presenting beautiful colour photographs and illustrations and it is interesting to compare this
volume with the concurrent and equally ambitious Cortinarius, Flora series, the Swedish Photographica (1989-98) which is currently at Volume 4. The French series consists of exquisite colour drawings, certainly some of the best representations of these beautiful fungi I have ever seen, capturing their subtle shapes and colours perfectly. If for no other reason they are to be commended for this - they are truly a labour of love. This series has 261 plates to date each with two to four taxa on a plate and usually with a number of fruit-bodies shown. The Swedish series uses photographs: one taxon on each plate with 240 plates. The plates are beautifully photographed with great care being taken to get accurate colour matching. So in terms of numbers of colour plates and quality of illustration they are
142
KEY LINKS FOR FIELD MYCOLOGISTS Paul F. Hamlyn 24 Tanfield Road, East Didsbuty, Manchester M20 5GF. [email protected]> Searching the WorldWide Web he dynamic nature of the Internet together with its vast range of resources poses a major challenge to anybody searching for information. Web pages are frequently revised and can change in content and appearance sometimes overnight. In addition, new sites are appearing all the time and old ones may disappear or move to a new address. Search engines often throw up thousands of links to a given set of keywords and have the limitation that an excellent site will not be listed if it has not been registered with the database being queried. Following the links from one Web site to other sites can often lead to useful sources of information. However, research on the Internet can take hours of work and it is very frustrating when the results are less than fruitful. Hopefully, new search technologies and the introduction of XML will lead to a considerable improvement in the precision of Web searches within the next five years (Butler, 2000). When I carried out a keyword search for fungus on Google it found some 164,000 Web page matches illustrating just how much material of potential interest to mycologists is already available on the Internet. The most complete list of mycology resources can be found at the WWW Virtual Library of Mycology. The site consists of several pages containing hundreds of links but a major advantage is that it can be searched in isolation from the Web as a whole. For this article, I have attempted to identify and organise a much smaller selection of links that are likely to be of interest to field mycologists in the UK. I have not included the URLs for Web sites reviewed in this paper to save space and many will probably change over the next few months anyway. They are all listed at
T
Local Recording Groups Several recording groups in the UK are now online and their pages can provide a wealth of information. For example, North West Fungus Group (NWFG) has been on-line for almost five years (Hamlyn & Cook, 1996) and includes selected articles from the NWFG newsletter such as the often quoted paper by Robin Dean on fungal microscopy. Many new members have joined NWFG using the on-line membership form and this in itself is a good reason for having a Web presence. Members of the NWFG have been keen to set up their own sites on various aspects of mycology. Mike Walton, editor of the NWFG Newsletter, has scanned and placed on-line the full text and illustrations of severalVictorian books about fungi. John Taylor’s Web pages on ‘Recording Fungi in North West England’ include detailed records of fungi recorded in the region since 1996 and a list of the most frequently recorded fungi seen on field trips since 1975. John also periodically produces a useful set of notes covering recent publications and other issues relating to the identification, recording and ecology of fungi. Creating a Web site to advertise the activities of ydur own group is not difficult (Hamlyn, 1997) especially since it is now possible to create Web pages directly from programs such as Microsoft Word. However, if y?u don’t have the time to design and upload one yourself,
Field Mycology Volume 2(4), October 2001 ing all genera of sexual fungi forming fruitbodies on CD-ROM by 200 1.
Cultivation Kits If you want to grow fungi rather than just identifying them, mushroom cultivation kits are now available for several edible species and can be ordered on-line from U K suppliers. Fungi Perfecti (Olympia, USA) stock a wide range of mushroom-growing accessories and cultures. They also run training courses on growing gourmet mushrooms (Hamlyn & Temple, 1997). However, I would not recommend buying preinoculated kits from the United States due to the high postage costs.
Microscopy Microscopy-UK describes itself as the undisputed home of microscopy on the Web and is an excellent resource for detailed information about microscopy. The site has links to suppliers of microscopic equipment such as Brunel and also publishes a free monthly Web magazine called Micscape. Micscape was first published in November 1995 and now there are over 400 articles on-line. Several recent articles have reported on the use of relatively cheap webcams for photomicrography. While not as good as a 35mm photograph, the images appear to be quite acceptable and there are no worries about the cost of film and development. If you already own a PC and a microscope, and want to keep electronic records of your microscope slides, this seems like a good way to get started. Why not put your best pictures on-line so that we can all have a look at them? Other Sites Other notable U K resources include distribution maps of selected species from the BMS Foray Records Database, the Wild Mushroom Pickers’ Code of Conduct from the BMS Web site and some endangered species of fungi and lichens on the Plantlife Web site. The mycology section of the RBG site (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) gives details of current activities. For example, work has started on the first checklist and database of the British and Irish Basidiomycetes. The threeyear project has received funding from conservation and other bodies. The list will not only be published in book format, but will also be maintained as an actively updated database avail-
able for consultation through the Internet. More details can be found in the April 2000 issue of Kew Scientist, an on-line newsletter that is produced twice a year in Portable Document Format (PDF). You don’t have to read the newsletter on-line since PDF files can be downloaded to your computer. Instead of leftclicking with your mouse on the PDF link to open it, right-click on the link. Then click on the option in the pop-up menu that says ‘Save Link As’ or ‘Save Target As’ to save the P D F file to your hard drive [or if using a Macintosh click and hold on the link and move down the drop-down menu which will appear and select “save to disk” - Ed.]. P D F files are quite large so this may take a few minutes. There are many other excellent sites around the world but it is impossible to draw attention to anything but a handful of them in this article. The first worthy of mention is Mycoinfo which describes itself as the world’s first mycology ejournal. Mycoinfo includes a wide spectrum of information about fungi on a well-planned site, its creators having a solid understanding of both mycology and Web site design. As you might expect there are numerous pictures of fungi from all over the world on the Web but sourcing the picture for a particular species is not always easy. Fortunately, Flemming Larsen has already done this for us by providing a site containing nearly 1600 images linked directly to their original URL. Many Universities host mycology sites such as the one by Tom Volk, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. Although biased towards North America, the site contains much useful information about fungi. A ‘fungus of the month’ section introduced in January 1997 ensures that the site is regularly updated. While there is a lot of good information on the World Wide Web, care has to be taken regarding the reliability of any material from this source. It is a strength but also a weakness of the Internet that almost anyone can put anything on-line. In doing so, however, they bypass the advantages of traditional publication such as editorial and peer review. This does not make the information invalid but it does mean that you have to take care to check its reliability and credibility. You can tell a lot about the authenticity of a page by finding out all you can about its author or publisher. Try to find out if the author is the original creator of
141
Field Mycology Volume 2(4), October 200 1 Hamlyn, P.F. & Cook, R. (1996). North West Fungus Group goes on-line. Mycologist lO(4): 177-179. Hamlyn, P.F. (1997). Creating a mycological site on the Internet. Mycologist 11 (1): 23-26. Hamlyn, P.F. &Temple, J. (1997). Growing gourmet mushrooms - the Stamets seminars. Mycologist 1l(4): 157-1 58.
the information, his or her experience, what institution (company, university, etc.) if any supports the information and when it was created or last updated. Happy surfing!
References Butler, D. (2000). Souped-up search engines. Nature 405: 112-1 15.
BOOK REVIEW ATLAS DES CORTINAIRES Les Cortinaires Hmnuloides - Hors-serie No. 1 A. Bidaud, I?. Moenne-Loccoz, P. Reumaux avec la collaboration du Docteur R. Henry. Editions Federation Mycologique DauphineSavoie, 1997. Available from: Madame Catherine ROUPIOZ - MARLIOZ, 74270 Frangy, France. [No ISBN] 54 colour plates plus text. Price 450 F.
T
here are some works which are a delight to review because of their quality, others which are plainly awful and those which by their enormous scale and complexity almost defy adequate review. This volume, and its nine companions, all fall into the last category. All of them with the unexplained exception of this recent, special, bound volume follow a similar format consisting of loose-leaf colour plates with an accompanying booklet of descriptive text and line drawings. Cortinarius will never be an easy genus to identify or even for different mycologists to agree on taxonomically and nomenclaturally. The large numbers of taxa, where macroscopic differences - particularly subtle colour variations are of great importance in differentiation, their long history of varied interpretation by different authors and lastly their often irregular to rare occurrence in nature, all combine to frustrate a clear analysis. In recent years Cortinarius has benefited from a huge surge of interest with numerous publications presenting beautiful colour photographs and illustrations and it is interesting to compare this
volume with the concurrent and equally ambitious Cortinarius, Flora series, the Swedish Photographica (1989-98) which is currently at Volume 4. The French series consists of exquisite colour drawings, certainly some of the best representations of these beautiful fungi I have ever seen, capturing their subtle shapes and colours perfectly. If for no other reason they are to be commended for this - they are truly a labour of love. This series has 261 plates to date each with two to four taxa on a plate and usually with a number of fruit-bodies shown. The Swedish series uses photographs: one taxon on each plate with 240 plates. The plates are beautifully photographed with great care being taken to get accurate colour matching. So in terms of numbers of colour plates and quality of illustration they are
142