The Pasoh Forest Reserve (pasoh FR) has been a leading center for international field research in the Asian tropical forest since the 1970s, when a joint research project was carried out by Japanese, British and Malaysian research teams with the cooperation of the University of Malaya (UM) and the Forest Research Institute (FRI, now the Forest Research Institute Malaysia, FRIM) under the International Biological Program (IBP). The main objective of the project was to provide basic information on the primary productivity ofthe tropical rain forest, which was thought to be the most productive of the world's ecosystems. After the IBP project, a collaborative program between the University of Malaya and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, for post-graduate training was carried out at Pasoh. Reproductive biology of so me dipterocarp trees featured in many of the findings arrived at through the program, contributing greatly to progress in the population genetics of rain forest trees. Since those research pro grams, apart of the Pasoh forest and its field research station have been managed by FRIM. In 1984, FRIM started a long-term ecological research program in Pasoh FR with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and Harvard University, establishing a 50-ha plot and enumerating and mapping all trees 1 cm or more in diameter at breast height. A recensus has been conducted every 5 years.

Fungi of Australia Volume 2B: Catalogue and Bibliography of Australian Fungi 2 is an essential reference for taxonomists working on Australian fungi, and anyone who wishes to use up-to-date names of Australian fungi. Together with its companion volume, Fungi of Australia Volume 2A, it lists all the names applied to Australian macrofungi and provides the up-to-date accepted name for each species, along with a comprehensive listing of relevant literature. Volume 2B covers larger fungi in the Basidiomycota, along with the larger Myxomycota. Groups dealt with in this volume include bracket fungi, slime moulds, puffballs, earthballs, earthstars, stinkhorns, birds nest fungi, coral fungi, jelly fungi, polypores, and stereoid, corticioid and thelephoroid fungi. This important work includes entries for more than 1,700 accepted names. For each name the catalogue lists place and date of publication, taxonomic synonyms, cross references to misidentifications and a comprehensive list of all works in which the name has been used in an Australian context. The extensive bibliography contains over 1,800 entries and includes not only taxonomic publications relevant to species described from Australia, but also publications on fungi in relation to forestry, agriculture, ecology, medicine, chemistry and general biology.

Examining the progress and shifts that have taken place towards understanding fungi, this volume examines most of the major groups, including Chytridiomycota, Zygomycota, Ascomycota, and Basidiomycota. Topics include advances in morphological and molecular taxonomy of the highly toxigenic Fusarium species, understanding the phylogeny of the alternarioid hyphomycetes, and methods used in fungal evolutionary biology along with theory, examples, and potential applications. Also discussed are proteomics research for rapid diagnosis to invasive candidiasis as well as ways in which molecular biologists and morphosystematists can develop synergy.

British mycologists have had a major impact worldwide. Commemorating the centenary of the British Mycological Society, founded in 1896, this book gives an account of the British contribution to mycology, both at professional and amateur level. A variety of distinguished British and American authors give an authoritative commentary on the state of mycology, and on potential future developments in fields in which British mycologists made important breakthroughs. The book is introduced by an overview of the British contribution and personal views on pioneering work on aquatic hyphomycetes, tropical mycology and the amateur contribution. Later review articles treat a number of subjects in depth such as physiology, systematics, ecology, chemistry and mapping. This unique book will be of great interest to all professional and amateur mycologists in both research and teaching.

Mycology, the study of fungi, originated as a subdiscipline of botany and was a des criptive discipline, largely neglected as an experimental science until the early years of this century. A seminal paper by Blakeslee in 1904 provided evidence for self incompatibility, termed "heterothallism", and stimulated interest in studies related to the control of sexual reproduction in fungi by mating-type specificities. Soon to follow was the demonstration that sexually reproducing fungi exhibit Mendelian inheritance and that it was possible to conduct formal genetic analysis with fungi. The names Burgetf, Kniep and Lindegren are all associated with this early period of fungal genet ics research. These studies and the discovery of penicillin by Fleming, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1945, provided further impetus for experimental research with fungi. Thus began a period of interest in mutation induction and analysis of mutants for biochemical traits. Such fundamental research, conducted largely with Neurospora crassa, led to the one gene: one enzyme hypothesis and to a second Nobel Prize for fungal research awarded to Beadle and Tatum in 1958. Fundamental research in biochemical genetics was extended to other fungi, especially to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and by the mid-1960s fungal systems were much favored for studies in eukaryotic molecular biology and were soon able to compete with bacterial systems in the molecular arena.