New perspectives towards analysing fungal communities in terrestrial environments

Fungi play key roles in numerous ecosystem functions, and recent advances i n the study of fungal diversity and ecology have led to a greater appreciat ion of this group of microeukaryotes. The application of a variety of nucle ic acid techniques to fungal classification and phylogeny has led to a numb er of evolutionary insights, and has also begun to provide the necessary in formation for identification of unknown isolates and DNA sequences, These d ata, together with direct molecular characterisation of fungi in the field, provide new possibilities to describe fungal diversity and distribution. S uch advances will no doubt also provide the means for a more detailed inter pretation of ecological experiments.