In mycology, a dark taxon (pl.: dark taxa; or dark fungus) is a taxon that does not appear to produce any observable morphological structure and that appears impossible to cultivate in laboratory conditions. Dark taxa are chiefly detected by DNA sequencing, and in particular environmental metabarcoding.
Dark taxa make up a paraphyletic group, with dark taxa appearing in every major fungal lineage. Dark taxa appear to make up a significant portion of extant fungal taxa. According to Wang et al. (2016) "the majority of the extant fungal diversity produces no distinguishing morphological structures that are visible or describable", and according to Martin Ryberg dark fungi "could well prove to be the dominant life style in the fungal kingdom".
The naming of dark taxa is not supported by the ICN as a type specimen requires direct observation.
References
- ^ Boyadzhieva (2023)
- ^ Nilsson et al. (2023:144)
- Wijayawardene et al. (2021:7)
- Wijayawardene et al. (2021:1)
Bibliography
- Boyadzhieva, Iva (2023). "Do all fungi matter? Yes, new study argues". eurekalert.org. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
- Nilsson RH, Larsson KH, Taylor A, Bengtsson-Palme J, Jeppesen TS, Schigel D, Kennedy P, Picard K, Glöckner FO, Tedersoo L, Saar I, Kõljalg U, Abarenkov K (2018), "The UNITE database for molecular identification of fungi: handling dark taxa and parallel taxonomic classifications" (PDF), Nucleic Acids Research, 47 (D1): D259–D264, doi:10.1093/nar/gky1022, ISSN 0305-1048, PMC 6324048, PMID 30371820
- Nilsson RH, Ryberg M, Wurzbacher C, Tedersoo L, Anslan S, Põlme S, Spirin V, Mikryukov V, Svantesson S, Hartmann M, Lennartsdotter C, Belford P, Khomich M, Retter A, Corcoll N, Gómez Martinez D, Jansson T, Ghobad-Nejhad M, Vu D, Sanchez-Garcia M, Kristiansson E, Abarenkov K (2023), "How, not if, is the question mycologists should be asking about DNA-based typification", MycoKeys, 96: 143–157, doi:10.3897/mycokeys.96.102669, ISSN 1314-4057, PMC 10194844, PMID 37214179, retrieved 2023-08-29
- Wang Z, Nilsson RH, James TY, Dai Y, Townsend JP (2016), "Future Perspectives and Challenges of Fungal Systematics in the Age of Big Data", in Li DW (ed.), Biology of Microfungi, Fungal Biology, Springer International Publishing, pp. 25–46, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-29137-6_3, ISBN 978-3-319-29135-2
- Wijayawardene NN, Bahram M, Sánchez-Castro I, Dai DQ, Ariyawansa K, Jayalal U, Suwannarach N, Tedersoo L (2021), "Current Insight into Culture-Dependent and Culture-Independent Methods in Discovering Ascomycetous Taxa", Journal of Fungi, 7 (9): 703, doi:10.3390/jof7090703, ISSN 2309-608X, PMC 8467358, PMID 34575741, retrieved 2023-08-29
 | This fungus-related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |