Scaling up discovery of hidden diversity in fungi: impacts of barcoding approaches.

ABSTRACT: The fungal kingdom is a hyperdiverse group of multicellular eukaryotes with profound impacts on human society and ecosystem function. The challenge of documenting and describing fungal diversity is exacerbated by their typically cryptic nature, their ability to produce seemingly unrelated morphologies from a single individual and their similarity in appearance to distantly related taxa. This multiplicity of hurdles resulted in the early adoption of DNA-based comparisons to study fungal diversity, including linking curated DNA sequence data to expertly identified voucher specimens. DNA-barcoding approaches in fungi were first applied in specimen-based studies for identification and discovery of taxonomic diversity, but are now widely deployed for community characterization based on sequenci

SUBMITTER: Yahr R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4971188 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature