Fungi play major roles in ecosystem processes, but the determinants of fungal diversity and biogeographic patterns remain poorly understood. Using DNA metabarcoding data from hundreds of globally distributed soil samples, we demonstrate that fungal richness is decoupled from plant diversity. The plant-to-fungus richness ratio declines exponentially toward the poles. Climatic factors, followed by edaphic and spatial variables, constitute the best predictors of fungal richness and community composition at the global scale. Fungi show similar latitudinal diversity gradients to other organisms, with several notable exceptions. These findings advance our understanding of global fungal diversity patterns and permit integration of fungi into a general macroecological framework.

The nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region is the formal fungal barcode and in most cases the marker of choice for the exploration of fungal diversity in environmental samples. Two problems are particularly acute in the pursuit of satisfactory taxonomic assignment of newly generated ITS sequences: (i) the lack of an inclusive, reliable public reference data set and (ii) the lack of means to refer to fungal species, for which no Latin name is available in a standardized stable way. Here, we report on progress in these regards through further development of the UNITE database (http://unite. ut.ee) for molecular identification of fungi. All fungal species represented by at least two ITS sequences in the international nucleotide sequence databases are now given a unique, stable name of the accession number type (e.g. Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus|GU586904|

With the recent changes concerning pleomorphic fungi in the new International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), it is necessary to propose the acceptance or protection of sexual morph-typified or asexual morph-typified generic names that do not have priority, or to propose the rejection or suppression1 of competing names. In addition, sexual morph-typified generic names, where widely used, must be proposed for rejection or suppression in favour of asexual morph-typified names that have priority, or the latter must be proposed for conservation or protection. Some pragmatic criteria used for deciding the acceptance or rejection of generic names include: the number of name changes required when one generic name is used over another, the clarity of the generic concept, their relative frequencies of use in the scientific literature, and a vote of interested mycologists. Here, twelve widely used generic names in three families of Hypocreales are proposed for acceptance, either by conservation or protection, despite their lack of priority of publication, or because they are widely used asexual morph-typified names. Each pair of generic names is evaluated, with a recommendation as to the generic name to be used, and safeguarded, either through conservation or protection. Four generic names typified by a species with a sexual morph as type that are younger than competing generic names typified by a species with an asexual morph type, are proposed for use. Eight older generic names typified by species with an asexual morph as type are proposed for use over younger competing generic names typified by a species with a sexual morph as type. Within Bionectriaceae, Clonostachys is recommended over Bionectria; in Hypocreaceae, Hypomyces is recommended over Cladobotryum, Sphaerostilbella over Gliocladium, and Trichoderma over Hypocrea; and in Nectriaceae, Actinostilbe is recommended over Lanatonectria, Cylindrocladiella over Nectricladiella, Fusarium over Gibberella, Gliocephalotrichum over Leuconectria, Gliocladiopsis over Glionectria, Nalanthamala over Rubrinectria, Nectria over Tubercularia, and Neonectria over Cylindrocarpon.

The cryptic lifestyle of most fungi necessitates molecular identification of the guild in environmental studies.Over the past decades, rapid development and affordability of molecular tools have tremendously improved insights of the fungal diversity in all ecosystems and habitats. Yet, in spite of the progress of molecular methods, knowledge about functional properties of the fungal taxa is vague and interpretation of environmental studies in an ecologically meaningful manner remains challenging. In order to facilitate functional assignments and ecological interpretation of environmental studies we introduce a user friendly traits and character database FungalTraits operating at genus and species hypothesis levels. Combining the information from previous efforts such as FUNGuild and Fun Fun together with involvement of expert knowledge, we reannotated 10210 and 151 fungal and Stramenopila genera, respectively. This resulted in a stand-alone spreadsheet dataset covering 17 lifestyle related traits of fungal and Stramenopila genera, designed for rapid functional assignments of environmental studies. In order to assign the trait states to fungal species hypotheses, the scientific community of experts manually categorised and assigned available trait information to 697413 fungal ITS sequences. On the basis of those sequences we were able to summarise trait and host information into 92623 fungal species hypotheses at 1% dissimilarity threshold.

DNA sequences accumulating in the International Nucleotide Sequence Databases (INSD) form a rich source of information for taxonomic and ecological meta-analyses. However, these databases include many erroneous entries, and the data itself is poorly annotated with metadata, making it difficult to target and extract entries of interest with any degree of precision. Here we describe the web-based workbench PlutoF, which is designed to bridge the gap between the needs of contemporary research in biology and the existing software resources and databases. Built on a relational database, PlutoF allows remote-access rapid submission, retrieval, and analysis of study, specimen, and sequence data in INSD as well as for private datasets though web-based thin clients. In contrast to INSD, PlutoF supports internationally standardized terminology to allow very specific annotation and linking of interacting specimens and species. The sequence analysis module is optimized for identification and analysis of environmental ITS sequences of fungi, but it can be modified to operate on any genetic marker and group of organisms. The workbench is available at http://plutof.ut.ee.