FungalTraits:a user-friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

The cryptic lifestyle of most fungi necessitates molecular identification of the guild in environmental studies.Over the past decades,rapid development and affordability of molecular tools have tremendously improved insights of the fungal diversity in all ecosystems and habitats.Yet,in spite of the progress of molecular methods,knowledge about functional properties of the fungal taxa is vague and interpretation of environmental studies in an ecologically meaningful manner remains challenging.In order to facilitate functional assignments and ecological interpretation of environmental studies we introduce a user friendly traits and character database FungalTraits operating at genus and species hypothesis levels.Combining the information from previous efforts such as FUNGuild and FunFun together with involvement of expert knowledge,we reannotated 10,210 and 151 fungal and Stramenopila genera,respectively.This resulted in a stand-alone spreadsheet dataset covering 17 lifestyle related traits of fungal and Stramenopila genera,designed for rapid functional assignments of environmental stud-ies.In order to assign the trait states to fungal species hypotheses,the scientific community of experts manually categorised and assigned available trait information to 697,413 fungal ITS sequences.On the basis of those sequences we were able to summarise trait and host information into 92,623 fungal species hypotheses at 1%dissimilarity threshold.

Trends in yeast diversity discovery

Yeasts,usually defined as unicellular fungi,occur in various fungal lineages.Hence,they are not a taxonomic unit,but rather represent a fungal lifestyle shared by several unrelated lineages.Although the discovery of new yeast species occurs at an increasing speed,at the current rate it will likely take hundreds of years,if ever,before they will all be documented.Many parts of the earth,including many threatened habitats,remain unsampled for yeasts and many others are only superficially studied.Cold habitats,such as glaciers,are home to a specific community of cold-adapted yeasts,and,hence,there is some urgency to study such environments at locations where they might disappear soon due to anthropogenic climate change.The same is true for yeast communities in various natural forests that are impacted by deforestation and forest conversion.Many countries of the so-called Global South have not been sampled for yeasts,despite their economic promise.However,extensive research activity in Asia,especially China,has yielded many taxonomic novelties.Comparative genomics stud-ies have demonstrated the presence of yeast species with a hybrid origin,many of them isolated from clinical or industrial environments.DNA-metabarcoding studies have demonstrated the prevalence,and in some cases dominance,of yeast species in soils and marine waters worldwide,including some surprising distributions,such as the unexpected and likely common presence of Malassezia yeasts in marine habitats.

Correction to:FungalTraits:a user friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

Correction to:Fungal Diversity(2020)105:116 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13225-020-00466-2 There were errors in the name of author LászlóG.Nagy and in affiliation no.31 in the original publication.The original article has been corrected.