DISCUSSION OF SPECIES

The species pages comprise a set of illustrations and essays on individual species of fungi. In each case, clicking on a name will lead you to a large illustration of the species. Other than this simple format everything else is open-ended. In some instances the discussion is short and offers only a simple description of the species, but in other cases the discussion may be quite detailed and may provide additional pictures. In any case, the emphasis wil be on natural history, the overall theme of this web site.

Arriving at the species pages may be accomplished by going through the Essays on Fungi choice at the Mycology Web Pages home page and clicking on the Species button. This is the most linear way to do it, but unlike most locations on the site there are also direct paths from other pages, such as checklists, essays and discussions. Since the information on the source pages may be relevant to the species pages you may be presented with more than one return path on the upper left part of the page. This is a fundamental departure from all other parts of the site, but one that gives you the most flexibility in exploring a topic.

You may notice on the illustration pages that species names are followed by one or more names or letters. For example, the species Coltricia perennis will be presented as Coltricia perennis (L.) Murrill. This is a convention followed by all taxonomists when writing down the names of species. Normally this is done only once in a text; all further uses of the name exclude these expressions. In the example of Coltricia perennis the bracketed letter L refers to the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who first named the species in 1753. Linnaeus orginally called it Boletus perennis, but later mycologists did not believe it should be included in Boletus and sought to find a more appropriate genus. The American mycologist W.A. Murrill believed it was best accommodated in the genus Coltricia and formally transferred it there in 1903. The notation following the name thus tells us that Linnaeus first described the species but that Murrill was responsible for placing it in Coltricia. This method of coding the authors of a name is useful to taxonomists who wish to trace the history of a species name. The abbreviations of an author's name also follow a convention. Although it is perfectly acceptable to spell out an author's name, most taxonomist prefer to save space and use one of the standard abbreviations. Thus we may cite the above example as Coltricia perennis (Linnaeus) Murrill or Coltricia perennis (L.) Murr., confident that others will understand what we mean.