Book Review

Abstract

Ainsworth and Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, 9th Edition. Edited by P. M. Kirk, P. F. Cannon, J. C. David and J. A. Stalpers 18 cm × 25 cm, 666 pp. Wallingford, UK : CABI Publishing [www.cabi.org ], 2001. £49.95. ISBN 085199 377 X . The reviewing of an indispensable work such as a dictionary is an unusual task. However, one might ask how plant pathologists can use and benefit from the latest revision of a world-famous dictionary? The bulk of the work is about names of fungi or their classification. Putting on one side things such as definitions of terms, recipes for reagents, mycological information of all kinds including information about great mycologists, it seems to me that; (i) a working plant pathologist wishes to know the correct, current name for fungi found during diagnosis of fungal diseases of plants, (ii) during research on one named disease, the correct, current names of related fungi may be valuable, as will be the references to up-to-date literature, (iii) during reading (especially today when Plant Pathology, for example, has so many papers from overseas pathologists) this Dictionary provides an immediate entry to information about fungal pathogens with which the reader is unfamiliar, and (iv) teachers and students need to teach and be taught the correct, current names of fungal pathogens. The Dictionary is, simply, a mine of information for any plant pathologist (young or old!!) and extremely supportive when venturing forth into new territory. Taking an issue of Plant Pathology (Volume 50, 2001), for example, this reviewer found out a great deal he was unaware of about Leptosphaeria, Pyrenopeziza, Rhizoctonia, Phytophthora, Phaeoisariopsis, Ophiostoma and Leptographium. Most of the new information is an up-dating of the literature, especially in the field of molecular biology (but by no means exclusively so). There is however, a further way in which this Dictionary as distinct from its forebears, e.g. 7th Edition (1983) and 8th Edition (1995), serves both mycology and plant pathology. In their Preface (how important it is to read Prefaces!) the authors say that their efforts have been directed on three major fronts. Almost incredibly, they simply define these efforts as ‘to revise the classification of the Ascomycota’; ‘to revise the classification of the Basidiomycota’, and ‘perhaps more significantly, we have taken further, long overdue, steps towards the integration of those fungi, which are not known to produce sexual spores, into the overall classification of the fungi’. It takes sometime for the enormity of these efforts to sink in with the average mycologist or plant pathologist. Only perusal of this new edition can reveal the extent to which these gigantic aims have been attained, and to predict the speed of such changes over the next few years, but much has been achieved. A feature of the 8th Edition (1995) was the inclusion of keys to fungal families (some 60 pages covering all fungi). In the 9th Edition the authors state that resources have not allowed the up-dating of these keys, so they have been omitted, but will gradually be put into the CABI Bioscience databases web site (www. indexfungorum.org). To do justice to this Dictionary, it is essential for plant pathologists to possess a copy and use it. Since W. C. Moore told me to ‘buy myself a copy and use it!’ (my salary as a Scientific Officer being then £600 p.a.!) I have not come across better advice to a plant pathologist. Ainsworth and Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, 9th Edition. Edited by P. M. Kirk, P. F. Cannon, J. C. David and J. A. Stalpers 18 cm × 25 cm, 666 pp. Wallingford, UK : CABI Publishing [www.cabi.org ], 2001. £49.95. ISBN 085199 377 X .