Fungal taxonomy and sequence-based nomenclature Lücking et al 2021 Nature Microbiology

Robert Lücking, M. Catherine Aime, Barbara Robbertse, Andrew N. Miller, Takayuki Aoki, Hiran A. Ariyawansa, Gianluigi Cardinali, Pedro W. Crous, Irina S. Druzhinina, David M. Geiser, David L. Hawksworth, Kevin D. Hyde, Laszlo Irinyi, Rajesh Jeewon, Peter R. Johnston, Paul M. Kirk, Elaine Malosso, Tom W. May, Wieland Meyer, Henrik R. Nilsson, Maarja Öpik, Vincent Robert, Marc Stadler, Marco Thines, Duong Vu, Andrey M. Yurkov, Ning Zhang & Conrad L. Schoch Fungal taxonomy and sequence-based nomenclature Nat Microbiol 6, 540–548 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-021-00888-x

Abstract

The identification and proper naming of microfungi, in particular plant, animal and human pathogens, remains challenging. Molecular identification is becoming the default approach for many fungal groups, and environmental metabarcoding is contributing an increasing amount of sequence data documenting fungal diversity on a global scale. This includes lineages represented only by sequence data. At present, these taxa cannot be formally described under the current nomenclature rules. By considering approaches used in bacterial taxonomy, we propose solutions for the nomenclature of taxa known only from sequences to facilitate consistent reporting and communication in the literature and public sequence repositories.