Fungi in vegetation science

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • W. Winterhoff

   Pages 1-5

3. The analysis and classification of fungal communities with special reference to macrofungi

   • Eef Arnolds

   Pages 7-47

4. Macrofungi on soil in deciduous forests

   • Anna Bujakiewicz

   Pages 49-78

5. Macrofungi on soil in coniferous forests

   • Gerhard Kost

   Pages 79-111

6. Macrofungal communities outside forests

   • Eef Arnolds

   Pages 113-149

7. Macrofungi on special substrates

   • Maria Lisiewska

   Pages 151-182

8. The analysis of communities of saprophytic microfungi with special reference to soil fungi

   • Walter Gams

   Pages 183-223

9. Communities of parasitic microfungi

   • Gerald Hirsch, Uwe Braun

   Pages 225-250

10. Back Matter

    Pages 251-258

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Readers will perhaps be surprised to find a volume about fungi within a handbook of vegetation science. Although fungi traditionally feature in textbooks on botany, at least since Whittaker (1969), they have mostly been categorised as an independent kingdom of organisms or, in contrast to the animal and plant kingdom, as probionta together with algae and protozoa. More relevant for ecology than the systematic separation of fungi from plants is the different lifestyle of fungi which, in contrast to most plants, live as parasites, saprophytes or in symbiosis. Theoretical factors aside, there are also practical methodological considerations which favour the distinction between fungal and plant communities, as has been shown for example by Dörfelt (1974).
Despite their special position the coenology of fungi has been dealt with in the handbook of vegetation science. It would be wrong to conclude that we underestimate the important differences between fungal and plant communities. The reasons for including the former are that mycocoenology developed from phytocoenology, the similarity of the methods and concepts still employed today and the close correlation between fungi and plants in biocoenoses.

• Vegetation
• algae
• biocoenosis
• botanics
• fungi
• plant
• plants
• soil

• Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

  W. Winterhoff

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