Associations and interactions between species of organisms are phenomena shared by all living things. What varies is the extent to which the more long-lasting interactions are beneficial or destructive to a given species and the degree of intimacy and reliance which one organism may have developed in association with another. Many of the more highly evolved relationships that have been studied involve microorganisms, either in consort with other microorganisms or with so-called higher forms of life. Mycologists are rarely surprised-but often fascinated-by the variety of kinds of living substrates and specialized organismal relationships that evolutionary processes have produced among the fungi. The present book deals in some detail with the specialized dependence of a unique group of fungi, the trichomycetes, upon certain arthropods. There has been no comprehensive and worldwide treatment of the tri chomycetes since their discovery by Joseph Leidy in 1848. The literature is scattered and in several languages, and many articles are now not only a bit old but out of date as well. As in many areas of biology, our knowledge about trichomycetes has increased somewhat exponentially in recent years.

The book is intended to help those who are interested in inventorying and identifying these gut fungi, and in understanding the basic biology of Trichomycetes."--BOOK JACKET.

The book has been divided into two parts. Part I comprises review chapters on trichomycetes - including the history, taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography ultrastructure, and physiology of trichomycetes. Part II comprises a composite of topics. It begins with two chapters on insect-fungus associations (ant pathogenic fungi and bark beetle galleries) fo

Mycology, the study of fungi, originated as a subdiscipline of botany and was a des criptive discipline, largely neglected as an experimental science until the early years of this century. A seminal paper by Blakeslee in 1904 provided evidence for self incompatibility, termed "heterothallism", and stimulated interest in studies related to the control of sexual reproduction in fungi by mating-type specificities. Soon to follow was the demonstration that sexually reproducing fungi exhibit Mendelian inheritance and that it was possible to conduct formal genetic analysis with fungi. The names Burgetf, Kniep and Lindegren are all associated with this early period of fungal genet ics research. These studies and the discovery of penicillin by Fleming, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1945, provided further impetus for experimental research with fungi. Thus began a period of interest in mutation induction and analysis of mutants for biochemical traits. Such fundamental research, conducted largely with Neurospora crassa, led to the one gene: one enzyme hypothesis and to a second Nobel Prize for fungal research awarded to Beadle and Tatum in 1958. Fundamental research in biochemical genetics was extended to other fungi, especially to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and by the mid-1960s fungal systems were much favored for studies in eukaryotic molecular biology and were soon able to compete with bacterial systems in the molecular arena.