Fungi of Australia

Fungi of Australia form an enormous and phenomenally diverse group, occupying a huge range of freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats with many ecological roles, for example as saprobes, parasites and mutualistic symbionts of algae, animals and plants, and as agents of biodeterioration. Where plants produce, and animals consume, the fungi recycle, and as such they ensure the sustainability of ecosystems.

Knowledge about fungi of Australia is meagre. Little is known about aboriginal cultural traditions involving fungi, or about aboriginal use of fungi apart from a few species such as Blackfellow's bread (Laccocephalum mylittae). The European people who came to Australia over the past couple of centuries, mostly from the British Isles, brought no strong fungal cultural traditions of their own. Fungi have also been largely overlooked in the scientific exploration of Australia. Since 1788, research on Australian fungi, initially by botanists and later by mycologists, has been spasmodic and intermittent. At governmental level, scientific neglect of Australian fungi continues: in the country's National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy for 2010-2030, fungi are mentioned only once, in the caption of one illustration, and some states currently lack mycologists in their respective fungal reference collections.

The exact number of fungal species recorded from Australia is not known, but is likely to be about 13,000. The CSIRO has published three volumes providing a bibliography of all Australian fungal species described. Volume 2A was published in 1997, and Volume 2B was published in 2003. Unlike the Flora of Australia series they are bibliographic lists and do not contain species descriptions.

The total number of fungi which actually occur in Australia, including those not yet discovered, has been estimated at around 250,000 fungal species, including about 5000 mushrooms, of which roughly 5% have been described. Knowledge of distribution, substrata and habitats is poor for most species, with the exception of common plant pathogens. One result of this poor knowledge is that it is often difficult or even impossible to determine whether a given fungus is a native species or an introduction.