"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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