Mushrooms represent the second most diverse group of organisms after insects. The variety of living fungi is created through evolutionary processes. Molecular phylogeny is used to reconstruct this evolution. Tropical African fungi are not well studied, regarding both molecular and morphological perspectives. Still, many taxa display primitive morphological features suggesting that some lineages may have been originated from tropical Africa. Within this research axis, we are attempting to:
(1) increasing our understanding of species/genera limits within core groups,
(2) assessing the phylogenetic placement of core taxa,
(3) elucidating the significance of tropical African taxa in the evolutionary interpretations within of some lineage.
To secure a clear hiatus between the taxa, as well as detecting any possible new species, we are using a combination of anatomo-morphological taxonomy with multiple genes molecular systematic. Our taxa or interest include mostly ectomycorrhizal one (Russulaceae, Inocybaceae, Boletaceae, Amanitaceae, Chantarellaceae, Thelephoraceae), wood-inhabiting fungi (the group of Polypores and related fungi) but the rust fungi (Pucciniaceae) as well. It is also our aim to enlarge the geographic sampling effort for broad evolutionary studies by increasing the availability of tropical African fungal sequences in the international sequence databases (GenBank, Unite, etc.).
