DISCUSSION OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FUNGI

Fungi, more than many groups of organisms, suffer from our excess cultural baggage. They are variously viewed as poisonous, pestilential, ugly or just plain sinister. From a more positive point of view they are considered to be good food, sources of wonder drugs, useful decomposers and makers of wine and beer. While all these views of fungi may have some merit, except for the sinister part, most people fail to appreciate them as fellow beings engaged in a great variety of harmless pursuits. Naturalists who may be intensely interested in the activities of birds may simultaneously see mushrooms as nothing more than a good meal. They are much more than that.

The are many ways to learn about fungi. This web site views them as a naturalist would and focuses on their natural history. It uses three kinds of pages:

1. Navigation pages

• Pages offering a choice of subject areas. The choices are marked by a small icon illustrating some aspect of that particular area. Clicking on these choices may lead to another navigation page or to a subject page. A small question mark in the upper left corner leads to the appropriate discussion page.

2. Discussion pages

• These pages explain the choices offered on the navigation pages and often provide further information about them. If you are already familiar with the choices you will not need to read the discussion pages. They are there to help you understand the basic concepts of mycology. Clicking on the small arrow will return you to the navigation page.

3. Subject pages

• The subject pages are the heart of our site. Here you will learn about various subjects in mycology and see illustrations related to them.

Navigation and subject pages always have a navigation path at top and bottom. This indicates the path of navigation pages leading to the page you are on. You can click on any part of the navigation path to return to that particular navigation page.

The Home Page is a navigation page divided into three main units:

1. What fungi are

2. Where fungi grow and what they are doing there

3. The diversity of fungi and its classification

Each of the three units deals with a fundamental aspect of mycology, the study of fungi. To proceed further, click on one of the three units. Each of these leads to a navigation page with a further choice of topics and you can thus delve ever more deeply into the subject. Together the three are an introduction to mycology, explaining the basic features of the fungi. The home page has links back to the top of the Mycology Web Pages and the New Brunswick Museum web site.

The Internet is a wonderful source of information on fungi. People with a great diversity of interests in fungi have excellent and detailed web sites waiting for your visits. Our web pages are an overview of fungal topics that are treated in more detail elsewhere. Whatever you read here will be given a much closer examination on other web sites and will be more completely illustrated. We encourge you to browse the web and learn. We have included very few links to other web sites, not because we wish to keep you here but from the more practical standpoint that links are difficult to maintain and are constantly changing. Just use your browser and see what you can find.

David Malloch
New Brunswick Museum