21st Century Guidebook to Fungi

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

The mysterious world of fungi is once again unearthed in this expansive second edition. This textbook provides readers with an all-embracing view of the kingdom Fungi, ranging in scope from ecology and evolution, diversity and taxonomy, cell biology and biochemistry, to genetics and genomics, biotechnology and bioinformatics. Adopting a unique systems biology approach - and using explanatory figures and colour illustrations - the authors emphasise the diverse interactions between fungi and other organisms. They outline how recent advances in molecular techniques and computational biology have fundamentally changed our understanding of fungal biology, and have updated chapters and references throughout the book in light of this. This is a fascinating and accessible guide, which will appeal to a broad readership - from aspiring mycologists at undergraduate and graduate level to those studying related disciplines. Online resources are hosted on a complementary website.

Genres: Reference

700 pages, Paperback

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My mycology textbooks were out of date before I bought them....well at least as far as nomenclature was concerned.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.