Newsletter of the FRIENDS OF THE FARLOW

Fungi pursuing the truffle strategy by producing underground fruiting bodies have long been recognized as an artificial group with representatives in Zygomycota, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. Those producing asci (a saclike structure where the spores are produced) were at one time all placed in the order Tuberales (Ascomycota) (e.g. from Tulasne & Tulasne 1851 to Korf 1973). Similarities between tuberalean truffles and above ground fruiting bodies of cup-fungi (Pezizales) have been recognized for over a century and various hypotheses about the evolution from above ground fruiting bodies (apothecia) to below ground truffles were discussed. It was suggested that several distinct lineages of the Pezizales had given rise to members of Tuberales independently, but a formal fusion was not made until Trappe (1979) emended several families of Pezizales to include truffles and transferred selected families from the Tuberales to the Pezizales. Since then, the close relationship between truffles and cupfungi have gradually been confirmed and expanded upon or in some cases corrected, using cytological and ultra-structural features of asci and spores, and most recently analyses of DNA sequences.