Insect-Fungal Associations: Ecology and Evolution

Book Description

Insects and fungi have a shared history of association in common habitats where together they endure similar environmental conditions, but only recently have mycologists and entomologists recognized and had the techniques to study the intricacies of some of the associations. This new volume covers "seven wonders of the insect-fungus world" for which exciting new results have become available, often due to the use of new methods that include phylogenetic analysis and development of molecular markers. Eleven chapters of the volume are presented in two sections, "Fungi that act against insects" and "Fungi mutualistic with insects" that cover a number of major themes. Examples of necrotrophic parasites of insects are discussed, not only for biological control potential, but also as organisms with population structure and complex multipartite interactions; a beneficial role for symptomless endophytes in broad-leafed plants is proposed; biotrophic fungal parasites with reduced morphologies are placed among relatives using phylogenetic methods; complex methods of fungal spore dispersal include interactions with one or more arthropods; the farming behavior of New World attine ants is compared with that of humans and the Old World fungus-growing termites; certain mycophagous insects use fungi as a sole nutritional resource; and other insects obtain nutritional supplements from yeasts. Insects involved in fungal associations include--but are not limited to--members of the Coleoptera, Diptera, Homoptera, Hymenoptera, and Isoptera. The fungi involved in interactions with insects may be clustered taxonomically, as is the case for Ascomycetes in the Hypocreales (e.g., Beauveria, Metarhizium, Fusarium), ambrosia fungi in the genera ophiostoma and ceratocystis and their asexual relatives, Laboulbeniomycetes, Saccharomycetes, and the more basal Microsporidia. Other groups, however, have only occasional members (e.g., mushrooms cultivated by attine ants and termites) in such associations. The chapters included in this volume constitute a modern crash course in the study of insect-fungus associations.

Customer Reviews:

Scintillating Symbiosis.......2005-06-03

Biology often reveals worlds within worlds, and this book does an excellent job of describing the extraordinarily complex relationships between insects and fungi. Yeast-eating beetles! Fungi hiding in the leaves of plants! Ants that tend fungus gardens - like tiny mushroom farmers! This scholarly volume will open your eyes to some of the more subtle wonders of nature.

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Chemical Fungal Taxonomy
Frisvad
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0824700694

Book Description

Offers comprehensive coverage of the latest developments in both biochemical and physiological approaches to fungal systematics. Incorporates recent advances in molecular biology into systematics methods that can revolutionize taxonomic schemes.

Fungal Disease Resistance in Plants: Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Genetic Engineering (Crop Science) (Crop Science)

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Fungal Disease Resistance in Plants: Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Genetic Engineering (Crop Science) (Crop Science)

Manufacturer: Food Products Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1560229608

Book Description

Up-to-date, accurate information on recent developments in crop protection!

Fungal Disease Resistance in Plants: Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Genetic Engineering presents the latest developments in crop protection from fungal infection. Leading experts in botany, plant breeding, and plant pathology contribute their knowledge to help reduce and possibly prevent new outbreaks of devastating crop epidemics caused by fungi. With exciting new advances in molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetic engineering, this informative book will help researchers, professors, and students further their understanding of plant defenses.

Fungal Disease Resistance in Plants is your guide to understanding the various barriers that plants have developed through evolution and adaptation to protect themselves from invading fungal pathogens. Defenses include physical barriers such as thick cell walls and chemical compounds expressed by the plant when attacked. Still other plants have acquired proteins that play an important role in defense. This book discusses these evolutionary traits and introduces new scientific techniques to engineer resistance in plants that have no built-in protection.

Fungal Disease Resistance in Plants explores:

cellular expression of resistance to fungal pathogens
the hypersensitive response and its role in disease resistance
induced plant resistance to fungal pathogens—mechanisms and practical
applications
pathogenesis-related proteins and their roles in resistance to fungal pathogens
signal transduction—plant networks, delivery, and response to fungal infection
fungus genes as they relate to disease susceptibility and resistance

Book Description

This book is concerned with the most devastating fungal diseases in history. These are the plagues of trees and crop plants, caused by invisible spores that have reshaped entire landscapes and decimated human populations. The Triumph of the Fungi focuses on the fascinating biology of the well- and lesser-known diseases, and also tells the stories of the scientists involved in their study, and of the people directly impacted by the loss of forest trees like the chestnut, and cash crops such as coffee and cacao. In a surprisingly brief time, human knowledge of the fungi that infect plants has evolved from Biblical superstition, to the recognition of the true nature of plant disease, and, more recently, to a sense of awe for the sophistication of these microbes. The crucial issue of human culpability in these fungal epidemics is addressed in the books closing chapter.

Customer Reviews:

Manifesto against monocultures.......2007-03-04

Apart from some strained attempts at humour, starting with the subtitle, Nicholas Money has produced an excellent book. The book is a well-organised and expressively written presentation of how various fungi [and their relations] have and are assaulting valuable trees and crops around the planet. With excellent graphics to support the text, the author describes how fungal infections have attacked decorative or lumber tree species, such as the chestnut and jarrah, crop plants like coffee, potatoes and rubber. He explains how the infections were detected and investigated by various researchers and what steps have been taken to curb or eliminate the infestation. The latter point is the one that should prompt the reader's close attention.

Although to many people, the blight causing the Irish Potato Famine may be the best known of fungal infections, Money opens with a story of the extermination of the American Chestnut. The account shows how little was known of fungi life cycles at the turn of the last century. Coping with the spreading infection was sporadic and ineffective. The spores, Money calculates, spread at the rate of over 100 metres per day. Small wonder governments failed to address the epidemic successfully. Control, in any case, would have meant an interdict on seed and seedling importation and transport, a multi-million dollar business. Such a draconian imposition would have raised the ire of business and governments alike. So we lost the chestnut. And the elm. The oaks and redwoods in California are presently under threat from a similar infestation. How can microbes be so destructive and apparently so immune to counter-measures?

Fungi are insidious in their invasive tactics and are talented breeders. Not only may a species have multiple mechanisms for breeding, many actually breed across species to create hybrids. These cross-bred organisms are highly adaptable to changing conditions. In fact, variations in environment may prompt species' mix to address the change. The breeding of multiple species may have immense impact, since some fungi may infect more than a hundred different types of plants. Money demonstrates mixed feelings as he describes some fungi as "the most exuberant swingers of the microbial world". It's an amazing capacity in such a simple organism. The genome of some species is nearly the size of a human's - but, far more importantly, the large genome imparts the ability to change rapidly as needed. This is one reason why so many fungi aren't "species-specific" in their infections.

In his descriptions of the historical efforts to identify the various rusts, blights, blasts and bunts attacking plants, Money recounts the efforts of investigators. There are the losers who went along almost fantastic idea tracks, attributing infections to malodorous mists and even moonlight. More rational researchers found ways of tracking infectors and how they operated. His first hero is Henry Murrill, who struggled to cope with the American chestnut epidemic that originated in the Bronx Zoo grounds in 1904. Rev. Miles Berkeley, working in limited circumstances, produced a landmark essay on the cause and effect of fungal infection of the "Irish" potato. Money's chapter heading, "Potato Soup" is telling as a descriptor.

Farther afield, Money admires the work achieved by a group of women in the Netherlands. Johanna Westerdijk, Christine Buisman and Marie Schwarz all made key contributions in revealing the mechanics of what is known as Dutch elm disease. Some of this work provided pointers to the evolutionary path of these fungi, information being applied elsewhere. Money's real praise, however, reaches further back in time in lauding two French scientific pioneers. Mathieu Tillet and Benedict Prevost proved to be the first to apply sound research methods in determining how plant disease operates. He would have this pair granted Nobel Prizes if the rules allowed posthumous awards. He notes that in France experimental research was held in low regard in their day. It was a serious uphill climb for them to gain recognition for their work.

It's not an uphill struggle to read this book, however. Money, who has published other works on mycology - the study of fungus - has an admirable way of making his point. The point here is that with fungi so adaptive, so easily disseminated over vast distances and so difficult to eradicate, the human species stands in some peril of indirectly succumbing to its effects. Wheat, maize, cocoa, coffee and rubber may join chestnuts in disappearing from our ken. These products are fundamental to our society, and more research must be undertaken to reveal how to address the problem. With so many of these crops being clones of earlier strains, their vulnerability is high, as is ours as a result. Read this and find out what you may be confronting. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

An alright book.......2007-01-03

As I had read the author's other books on fungi I thought this one would be great. I was wrong. It fine for folks who know little about fungi and their influences in the world but not of much value otherwise. Mr Money can do better.

Fantastic book!.......2006-12-13

It is often said that the cockroaches will outlast us--but Nicholas Money's new book convinces me it will be the fungi who triumph in the end. This wonderful, terrifying book details the devastation wrought by the fungi and our feeble efforts to keep them at bay. How is it possible that a book with such a grim message is a page-turner that makes you laugh out-loud on nearly every page? Because this guy can WRITE. Money is the Steven Jay Gould of mycology, the Richard Dawkins of the fungi, and this book is fantastic.

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Fungal Biology
Jim Deacon
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1405130660

Book Description

Fungal Biology is the fully updated new edition of this undergraduate text, covering all major areas of fungal biology and providing insights into many topical areas such as:fungal ultrastructure and the mechanisms of fungal growthimportant fungal metabolites, including antibiotics, mycotoxins and immunosuppressantsthe molecular techniques used to study fungal populationsfungal genetics and fungal genomesthe significance of fungi in mutualistic and pathogenic interactionsthe major methods for controlling fungi, including the fungi that cause diseases of humans and the antifungal drugs used to treat these infectionsThis edition also focuses on the interactions of fungi that form the basis for developing biological control agents, with several commercial examples of the control of insect pests and plant diseases.The text is illustrated with many diagrams and tables that summarize key points, and with many high-quality images (available in color to download free via www.blackwellpublishing.com/deacon and for instructors on CD-ROM).The emphasis throughout is on the functional biology of fungi, with several examples from recent research. The book also includes a clear illustrative account of the features and significance of the main fungal groups.

The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem, Third Edition (Mycology Series)

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The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem, Third Edition (Mycology Series)

Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0824723554

Book Description

The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem, Third Edition addresses many of the questions related to the observations, characterizations, and functional attributes of fungal assemblages and their interaction with the environment and other organisms. This edition promotes awareness of the functional methods of classification over taxonomic methods, and approaches the concept of fungal communities from an ecological perspective, rather than from a fungicentric view. It has expanded to examine issues of global and local biodiversity, the problems associated with exotic species, and the debate concerning diversity and function. The third edition also focuses on current ecological discussions - diversity and function, scaling issues, disturbance, and invasive species - from a fungal perspective. In order to address these concepts, the book examines the appropriate techniques to identify fungi, calculate their abundance, determine their associations among themselves and other organisms, and measure their individual and community function. This book explains attempts to scale these measures from the microscopic cell level through local, landscape, and ecosystem levels. The totality of the ideas, methods, and results presented by the contributing authors points to the future direction of mycology.

Molecular Principles of Fungal Pathogenesis

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Molecular Biology of Fungi

Molecular Principles of Fungal Pathogenesis

Manufacturer: ASM Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1555813682

Customer Reviews:

Molecular Biology of Fungi.......2006-11-11

The latest and best in the field. All authors are leaders who deserve being listened to. A major contribution to a fascinating field.

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MSc in crop prtection

Trichoderma And Gliocladium

Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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Trichoderma And Gliocladium (Trichoderma & Gliocladium) Volume 1: Basic biology, taxonomy and genetics

ASIN: 0748408053

Book Description

Fungi belonging to the genera Trichoderma and Gliocladium are soil- bourne saprophytes which have been used for industrial and agricultural applications for decades. Some strains produce enzymes and antibiotics while others are useful as biological agents for the protection of plants against pathogens. This second volume of two describes the commercial uses of Trichoderma and Gliocladium, beginning with an in depth discussion of the degradation of polysaccharides and macromolecules by fungal enzymes. The application of the fungi in biocontrol for agricultural purposes is then examined. The final section of this volume deals with protein production and the utilisation of Trichoderma enzymes by various industries.

Customer Reviews:

MSc in crop prtection.......2001-09-29

I am university professor in Colombia I give classes of entomology, fithopathology and biological control. Also I make investigations in biological control in pest and diseases

Fungal Genomics, Volume 4 (Applied Mycology and Biotechnology)

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Fungal Genomics, Volume 4 (Applied Mycology and Biotechnology)

Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0444516425

Book Description

Research in the genomics of a handful of fungi has matured at an unprecedented rate allowing comprehensive review. Developments in fungal genomics should be of great significance to new strategies in fields where disciplinary crossovers of fungal genomics, genes and their regulation, expression, and engineering will have a strong impact in dealing with agriculture, foods, natural resources, life sciences, biotechnology, informatics, metabolomics, pharmaceuticals and bioactive compounds.

This volume analyzes the commonly used molecular markers systems, and elaborates the development of biochemical genetics, which provides a model system that established the relationship between genes and enzymes. Current knowledge about the genomic and genetic variability of Candida albicans, the polymorphic fungus that is an opportunistic human pathogen of increasing medical importance, has been covered in detail. Current understanding of the genetics and functional genomic analysis of the most important fungal pathogens of staple food crops, rice and wheat among others is covered including chapters dealing with the genomics of economically important fungi such asMagnaporthe grisea, Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium, Trichoderma, Rhizoctonia, Mycosphaerella graminicola, and entomopathogenic fungi. With several thousand recent citations, it is hoped that volume four will serve as a useful reference for knowledgeable veterans and beginners as well as those crossing disciplinary boundaries into the exciting field of biotechnology, genomics and bioinformatics of fungi.

Microterrors: The Complete Guide to Bacterial, Viral and Fungal Infections That Threaten Our Health

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Let the terror begin!
Microterrors
Spelling Bee
Images paired with a quick reference and health facts
This is rated as a "Quick Reference" book only

Microterrors: The Complete Guide to Bacterial, Viral and Fungal Infections That Threaten Our Health
Tony Hart
Manufacturer: Firefly Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1552979709

Book Description

The hidden dangers surrounding us.

Despite the confident strides of modern science, the threat of deadly unseen organisms such as viruses, bacteria and fungi still grip the imagination with their ferocious intensity.

For instance, resistant strains of bacteria can now survive the strongest antibiotics and deadly new biological weapons are being cooked up in laboratories worldwide.

Microterrors explores these threats as well as humanity's greatest living rivals that have been on the planet far longer than we have.

The introduction covers terms, definitions and a brief natural history, including the role of viruses in human evolution, as well as bioengineering and biological weapons. Microterrors then presents the truly terrifying rogues' gallery of invisible killers.

Dramatic life-like digital illustrations and computer-colored electron images provide mug book profiles of hundreds of naturally occurring and bioengineered microterrors, including:

Ebola, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria
Bacteria: pneumonia, anthrax, botulism
Viruses: HIV, hepatitis, common cold
Fungi and blood and tissue diseases.

Each entry includes concise facts such as date of discovery and place of origin, period of incubation, symptoms and length of suffering, likelihood of death, treatments, vaccines and cures.

Customer Reviews:

Let the terror begin!.......2006-02-17

I have been looking for an informative book on microbes for a long time, and I've found exactly what I've been looking for with this book. The information in Microterrors is organized and easy to understand, especially for someone that's interested in finding out more about the germs they hear about everyday on the news. This book makes you want to learn more about these deadly terrors, and at the same time lock yourself away in a clean room. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in the genre.

Microterrors.......2005-10-25

Very fast delivery, great condition. Reassuring since i tried to order this book from another seller and never recieved it. Thanks

Spelling Bee.......2005-08-02

Nice little reference book. I bought it first and foremost because it was nicely designed. It's brief but informative and has alot of nice images. The downfall of this book, as I noticed after reading it, is that the editor did an appalling job of ...well editing. This book has an insane amount of spelling and grammar errors (for a book in print I mean). I was a bit dissapointed by that, I guess they sacrificed clarity for image. Too bad, it could have been perfect. Anyway not to end on a sour note the graphics and the information make up for that one flaw.

Images paired with a quick reference and health facts.......2005-03-11

The telescope's invention and advancement let the human world in on how tiny organisms looked, and helped to reveal pathogens and their dangers: now the images of these disease-producing microbes, from viruses to fungi, are accessible to non-scientists in MICROTERRORS, a gathering of microscope color images paired with a quick reference and health facts. Clinical notes on treatment and prevention round out a unique approach.

This is rated as a "Quick Reference" book only.......2004-12-13

I am very happy that I bought this book once I read it through. It is very useful as a quick reference, but it is not an indepth book. It is practical and the original description on the amazon site is right on the money. I read the whole thing in just a couple of hours but will keep it on hand for reference (as which I feel it was designed for).

I would recommend this book to students, teachers, and for people who want a quick reference for when that annoying "know it all" relative or neighbor brings up the subject of something they read in the paper last week. If you need a quick source, this is it.

My wife is a plague, virus, and pandemic book aficionado and she liked it alot. Even my 4th grader was able to use it for a project on the flu so that says (to me) that it really is easy to read.

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