Changes in Taxonomy and Nomenclature of Important Genera of Plant Pathogens

Abstract

We plant pathologists don't care how fungi copulate, we want to know how they eat! This sentence, with one earthy verb substituted, has stuck with me since I heard George McNew's lectures at Cornell in the early 19508. There is more than a kernel of truth in the assertion that until the 19508 taxonomic mycologists had been preoccupied with sex and were not making sufficient use of physiological characteristics in broadly based biosystematics. There had been an undue emphasis on the sexual state in classification most particularly in textbooks, but beginning in the 19508 the asexual state was to progress to a level of equality. Today, certainly, one would use character­ istics of all parts of the fungus derived by as many disciplines as one can master (including how fungi eat) to develop a broadly based natural classifi­ cation. At the risk of losing the audience after one paragraph, some attention to definitions is essential. The original terms sexual and asexual stages were supplanted by states, because it was clear that many conidial fungi did not progress by stages into a sexual stage. The terms perfect state and imperfect state became current usage, and ,they are still used in the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (29), which is referred to herein as the Code (29). Recently three terms were proposed-by Hennebert & Weresub (15): anamorph (imperfect state, often conidial)i teleomorph [perfect state, exclu­ sive of anamorph(s»), ap.d holomorph for the entire teleomorph-anamorph entity. Hughes (17) proposed the useful term'synanamorph to indicate the situation where more than one anamorph is recognized for a species.