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One Fungus One Name: A Plant Pathologist’s View

M. Wingfield

Published 2011 in Unknown venue

ABSTRACT

(39) v o l u m e 2 · n o . 2 I had the privilege of being invited to present one of the introductory lectures at the 1F=1N symposium. Given the level of tension concerning the topic, I am not sure that I was particularly excited about doing so at the time. Yet as a plant pathologist and academic, I have had to grapple with the confusing issue of fungi having more than one name, sometimes even different species names, for most of my career. Like many other plant pathologists, in my case working on trees, I have been confronted by farmers and foresters who have been frustrated, sometimes irritated, by the confusing names that they have had to contend with, while attempting to reduce the impact of plant diseases. Likewise, students in classes have been baffled by the complexities surrounding the dual nomenclature linked to anamorph/teleomorph connections and further complicated by pleomorphism in the asexual morphs of fungi. After many years of debate, often heated, the 1F=1N symposium in Amsterdam provided us with a perfect forum to debate the possibility of abandoning the dual nomenclature for the fungi. The turning point towards abandoning Article 59 and adopting a single name nomenclature arose as a result of DNA sequence data becoming increasingly available to mycologists. Effectively the “rules” dictated by the Code became restrictive, often redundant. Out of sheer frustration, some plant pathologists (see Crous et al. 2006) found it necessary to sidestep these regulations in order to present a meaningful taxonomy for important agents of plant disease. As John Taylor, the opening speaker at the 1F=1N symposium aptly stated, in seeking to abandon the dual nomenclature for fungi, we were in reality dealing with a situation where the proverbial “horse had already bolted” (Taylor 2011). My presentation followed Johns’ and, while also expounding on the inevitable demise of a dual nomenclature, as a plant pathologist and practitioner using mycology, my questions focussed mostly not on 1F=1N, but the issue of WHICH NAME we might most effectively use. The IF=1N symposium presented contradictory views regarding the opportunities and the hazards of abandoning a dual nomenclature for the fungi. The debates were lively, sometimes heated, and the event culminated in the drafting of the Amsterdam Declaration later published in this journal (Hawksworth et al. 2011). It also precipitated the publication of a contrary view (Gams et al. 2011), which also had a large number of supporters. But most importantly, I believe that these debates provided the material that was essential for the all-important deliberations that would follow during discussions regarding the next edition of the Code at the International Botanical Congress that was to follow in Melbourne in July. The watershed discussions in Melbourne regarding the future of the taxonomy of the fungi are over. And the outcomes ONE FUNGUS ONE NAME: A PLANT PATHOLOGIST’S VIEW

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