"fungi" again

[Ken Kinman]

Elizabeth,
     I will be more careful to refer to Class Urediniomycetea as "rusts and
allies" (the vast majority of which are true rusts).   Hopefully that will
take care of many of your concerns.  A lot has happen since Tehler's
cladistic analysis of Eumycota (in 1987), an important resource for my 1994
classification, and Tehler's Subclass  Urediniomycetes only included
Uredinales (as a part of his "Class" Basidiomycetes, and many
classifications do persist in treating basidiomycetes as a class).
     Now that the small Order Microbotryales (your subclass status still
seems unwarranted to me) and a few other outlying "smuts", etc., are being
transferred into this class, I may well decide to unite Melampsorales and
Pucciniales back into a single very large order Uredinales. I assume Order
Agaricostilbales and couple of other small orders will round out the class,
but although the vast majority of the species are true rusts, I'll be
careful to refer to the class as "rusts and allies" from now on.
      The reason for the emended ending -ea is part of my attempt to
standardize higher taxon names.  The -ea ending was already being used for
many class level taxa among animals, protists. etc.  Therefore, I made a one
letter emendation for eumycotan classes (-mycetea) and metaphytan classes
(-phycea), so that all 269 Classes of organisms in my 1994 classification
had a standardized -ea ending.  It should be noted, however, that
standardized endings are not formally part of the Kinman System per se, but
I decided to use them to show that such standardization was not as
disruptive as has been believed by past and present generations of
biologists.  Those who do not think this will be useful in the long run can
emend the ending back, and it has no effect on the cladisto-eclectic system
at all.  Computers can search for names no matter what the ending (utilizing
truncation), and given the messiness of taxonomic history it is already
often necessary to utilize truncation in computer searches anyway.
      I agree that Urediniomycetea is probably a better name than
Uredomycetea (although longer).  I based my spelling on "Uredomycotina"
(Cavalier-Smith, 1987), published in the same year as Tehler's paper.   I
can't find my copy of Cavalier-Smith's paper, so I don't recall his reasons
for using the prefix Uredo-, although I remember that his main division of
the basidiomycetes was based on centrosome morphology.  I certainly look
forward to learning if such centrosome morphology is still used as a
taxonomic characteristic for basidiomycetes.  I also look forward to reading
your Chapter in Mycota VII, but I will need some strong convincing before I
would accept raising Microbotryales to the level of subclass.  Once I see
your classification, I can show you how the Kinman System would handle it
(hopefully without having to resort to the many intermediate categories and
extra names that so often characterize typical cladist
classifications---i.e. minimizing all that taxonomic inflation).  So I hope
this helps clarifies my position.
                     -------Ken Kinman

>From: Elizabeth Frieders <frieders at UWPLATT.EDU>
>Reply-To: Elizabeth Frieders <frieders at UWPLATT.EDU>
>To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
>Subject: Re: "fungi" again
>Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 12:40:49 -0500
>
>Ken --
>Let me be very clear here -- We did not elevate rusts to a class status.
>And in no way did we mess with classification within the rusts ( I'll leave
>that for people who work on them).  We have dealt with some of the non-rust
>relatives and the bigger picture.
>
>The Uredinales are one of many orders (and unnamed clades) within the class
>Urediniomycetes, phylum Basidiomycota (please note that MOST MYCOLOGISTS
>use
>phylum levels, not class levels for the 4 groups of true fungi). The word
>basidiomycetes is not used to reflect a taxonomic category, merely a common
>name for the phylum, hence the use of lower-case "b".  I don't know of any
>mycologists who want to elevate the rusts above ordinal status; the rusts
>are a good, solid phylogenetic group, and why change something that isn't
>broken?  I see no usefulness in recognizing the rusts as a class. Yes,
>there
>are a lot of species, but there was a recent, rapid co-evolution of them
>with their angiosperm hosts. The rusts are one group among many that have
>been placed in the class Urediniomycetes (just like in other kinds of
>organisms, classes can contain many different orders, and in no way should
>it be suggested that all members of the class are members of the same
>order). If the rusts are elevated to class level, then every group will
>have
>to be elevated one or more ranks -- the Basidiomycota would thus have to be
>elevated to a Domain and all heck breaks loose.  (another argument for
>getting rid of the standard ranking system....?)
>
>You asked if I have a problem with your proposed classification, and yes, I
>do. As you have it written, you have placed your "microbotryales" within
>the same class with rusts, thus indicating that they are a rust, which THEY
>ARE NOT.  The only true rusts included in this paper are Cronartium and
>Nyssopsora; the remainder are non-rusts, but relatives of them. The true
>Microbotryales are a diverse group with several genera of predominantly
>dicot smuts, represented by Microbotryum spp. in this paper. There is a
>huge diversity of "little bizarre" heterobasidiomycete fungi that fall
>within the
>Urediniomycetes. You have completely ignored any phylogenetic relationships
>of the taxa, and the remainder of taxa within the Urediniomycetes.  We (the
>three authors of the abovementioned paper) have a chapter (Ch. 16) coming
>out in The Mycota VII in which we discuss the entire class including
>diversity and systematics. I suggest you wait for that to be in print
>(hopefully soon!) before you go messing around in places in which you are
>not familiar.
>My second major problem with your proposed classification is the name
>Uredomycetea. The prefix "Uredo" refers to an asexual, anamorphic genus
>Uredo, which cannot be used in classification of the sexual,
>teleomorhic/holomorphic taxa.  Uredinia is a teleomorph genus, hence the
>prefix "Uredinio" (as per the rules outlined in the  Code). And I am
>uncertain why you use the suffix -mycetea instead of -mycetes for the class
>level.
>
>I hope this clarifies our position somewhat.
>Beth
>----------
> >From: Ken Kinman <kinman at HOTMAIL.COM>
> >To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
> >Subject: "fungi" again
> >Date: Sun, Oct 10, 1999, 4:09 PM
> >
>
> >     I got a chance to look at Elizabeth Frieders recent paper in
>Mycologia.
> > I'm glad to see that we do agree that rust fungi should be raised to
>class status.  Instead of Urediniomycetes, I prefer to call it Class
>Uredomycetea.
> >   Unfortunately most mycologists persist in classifying this group as
>Order Uredinales and basidiomycetes as just a class.  If I (who classifies
> > Eumycota as a Phylum) recognize Uredomycetea, then surely mycologists
>who
> > recognize Eumycota as a Kingdom should be able to see the usefulness in
>recognizing it as a class (and I have no major problems with the spelling
>Urediniomycetea).
> >     But on the other hand, Elizabeth, would you consider classifying
>your clade as Order Microbotryales, rather than Subclass
>Microbotryomycetidae.
> > Until the systematics of the rust fungi (and all basidiomycetes for that
> > matter) gets sort out, would you have any objection to the following
>classification?:
> >   Class Uredomycetea (rust fungi; 4,000+ species)
> >       Order Microbotryales (3 families?)
> >       Order Melampsorales (3 families)
> >       Order Pucinniales (3-4 families)
> > ----------------------------------Cheers, Ken Kinman
> >

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