A Mycological Florilegium: Literature of 2001–2005

KEEPING TRACK of all the new developments that appear in the mycological literature is not easy these days. It demands time, access to journals, and attention to spot what is rele vant. At least access has become easier. Now everybody with a computer and an internet connection can see the abstracts of most research papers for FREE! Many journals also put the full text of articles on line, though you may need to be a subscriber to read them. Finding articles of interest can still be a problem because mycologists publish in a wide array of journals. Important journals in English that specialize in mycology, especially those that publish systematic mycology, include Mycologia, a publication of the Mycological Society of America; Mycological Research, published by the British Mycological Society; Mycotaxon, Mycological Progress by the German Mycological Society, and Mycoscience, put out by the Mycological Society of Japan, all of which make abstracts freely available. Mycotaxon and Mycological Progress publish only a full paper ver sion, but the other three do have the complete issues on line. However, new species and genera can appear in much more obscure places, such as New Botany of India which carried an article that I missed for seven years. Ecological and espe cially mycorhhizal research is published in a host of journals, from Mycorrhiza and New Phytologist to all kinds of ecological and forestry oriented jour nals. Phylogenetic articles fi nd a place in new journals such as Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Molecular Biology and Evolution, as well as Systematic Biology and the American Journal of Botany. Occasionally Nature or Science, the “big” generalist journals, carry mycological articles. Th ere is also a huge number of often small local mycological journals that can be seen only on paper. And these are the ones that are most likely to have keys to species, descriptions, and other basic information so invaluable for the person who simply wants to identify those mushA Mycological Florilegium: Literature of 2001–2005