21st Century Guidebook to Fungi

by David Moore, Geoffrey D. Robson, Anthony P.J. Trinci

Fungi have their own unique cell biology and life cycle, but also play critical roles in wider biological systems. This textbook provides a comprehensive view of fungal biology, ranging in scope from the evolutionary origins of fungi and other eukaryotes more than a billion years ago, to the impact fungi have on everyday life. Bringing mycology teaching right up to date, this unique systems biology approach emphasises the interactions between fungi and other organisms to illustrate the critical roles that fungi play in every ecosystem and food web. With more than 60 colour figures, examples of computational modelling and resource boxes directing students to areas of interest online, this book gives students an appreciation of fungi both at the organism level and in the context of wider biology. A companion CD accompanying the print book features a hyperlinked version of the book and the fully integrated World of Cyberfungi website.

Genres: Reference

640 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 2011

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

David Moore, BSc, PhD, DSc, FLS, is Reader in Genetics at the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Manchester.

Reviews

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mycology textbooks were out of date before I bought them....well at least as far as nomenclature was concerned. And changing nomenclature has been a continuing issue for mycologists. However, there are many other aspects to mycology than simply labelling and grouping them and I felt it was time that I refreshed my knowledge of the subject with an up to date textbook. Actually, this was easier said than done and I was fortunate to discover this book which was first published in 2011 and again in 2020...so is reasonably up to date and it seems to cover all the main sorts of dimensions that I'm interested in. I've acquired a few books recently on fungi and have been very dissatisfied with them. Some were just pretty pictures of fungi without any attempt at systematics or understanding; some were more pretty pictures but really just focused on those with large and/or brightly coloured fruiting forms. Others had more interesting information such as the symbiosis between algae and fungi (and, actually bacteria)...that comprise lichens. Plus statistics about the mind-boggling lengths of hyphae (equal to the width of our galaxy) that exist beneath the earth's surface. But and I was looking for a replacement of my old "Alexopolus" text book.....which, even if the nomenclature was already out of date.....as I found when I attended my first lecture, ....it had the sort of general information about fungi that I was looking for. The current book delivers. It covers fungal biology from cell and molecule through to whole organism and ecological and applied aspects. Maybe not a super amount of detail if you are looking for something specific like the role of crytococcus neoformans var B in skin mycoses .....but enough to give you some information. It's well organised and laid out ...plus has some nice coloured photographs. It might have benefited from more use of colour...say with the chemical structures, but that's a question of cost benefit for the publishers I guess.
I was especially fascinated to learn about the huge fungi such as the Prototaxites that grew up to 9m high and dominated the landscape 400 million years ago. And the way that septa are laid down within the hyphae; and the various species of ants that practice agriculture and cultivate fungi......and how they do this.
Ok....I confess. I haven't read all the book. It's still my intention to read from cover to cover ....but life is short and I haven't achieved this yet. I'll update this review when I have achieved this goal. Meantime, I'm more than happy to give it five stars.