Book of Abstracts (PDF) - International Mycological Association

IMC7 Thursday August 15th Lectures
271 - Integrating scientific research and information
systems
*
G. Hagedorn , M. Burhenne, M. Gliech, T. Gräfenhan &
M. Weiss
Federal Biological Research Center for Agriculture and
Forestry, Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology and
Biological Safety, Königin-Luise-Straße 19, D-14195
Berlin, Germany. - E-mail: g.hagedorn@bba.de
The GLOPP project (Global Information System for the
Biodiversity of Plant Pathogenic Fungi,
http://www.glopp.net/ ) started in the summer of 2000 and
will continue until spring 2003. It aims to provide a unified
view of data about fungi parasitizing higher plants. The
information system will integrate data on host plant
specificity, geographical distribution, and a core set of
descriptive characters that allow interactive online
identification. European and especially German pathogens
are treated with priority to guarantee high data quality and
a certain completeness. We plan to continue our work
within the framework of international, collaborative
successor projects. - The GLOPP system is presented as a
highly useful exercise combining basic organismic research
with research in biodiversity informatics. The system is
presented from the perspective of (a) system development
and information modeling, (b) contributing research
scientists, and (c) users in applied fields like plant
pathology extension services. Ultimately such efforts will
be successfull only if they are as valuable to content
generators as they are to information consumers.
Contributing researchers should be able to work more
efficiently within the information system than otherwise.
This is currently not the case, but the progress made is
substantial (see http://www.diversitycampus.net/ ).
272 - Fundamentals of biodiversity research or: What
we still do not know!
M. Piepenbring
Botanical Institute of the University of Frankfurt,
Senckenberganlage 31-33, 60054 Frankfurt am Main,
Germany. - E-mail: piepenbring@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Our knowledge of fungal biodiversity is limited not only
because of numerous undiscovered species, but we also
have many unresolved taxonomic and systematic questions
(incomplete descriptions, bad type material, unclear
synonymy), the morphology of many species is not well
documented, we ignore host ranges of many species, areas
of distribution, numerous aspects of life cycles, and effects
of interactions with other organisms. For the
documentation of existing knowledge of fungal diversity in
the internet, we include morphological descriptions in a
database. Therefore, we first need a list of morphological
characters and character states, which requires a reasonable
selection of adequate descriptive vocabulary. The
description of a species in literature might be satisfying at
first sight, its inclusion into the database, however, in
addition to problems of 'translation' due to the use of
different terminology, usually shows that the description is
far from complete. Often, the germination of spores and
other morphological details are not well documented.
During the input of data into the database we are forced to
ask numerous questions, of which many usually can not be
easily answered. Only by field work we obtain fresh
material which allows us to elaborate complete sets of
character states for the database, and contribute to our
knowledge on morphology, host range, distribution, and
ecology of the fungi.
273 - Connecting traditional and modern data sources:
Towards an integrated view on the biodiversity of
powdery mildews (Erysiphales)
1* 1 2
C. Kainz , D. Triebel & U. Braun
1 Botanische Staatssammlung München, Mycology Dept.,
Menzinger Strasse 67, D-80638 Muenchen, Germany. -
2 Martin-Luther-Universität Halle, Institut für Geobotanik
und Botanischer Garten, Neuwerk 21, D-06099 Halle,
Germany. - E-mail: kainz@botanik.biologie.unimuenchen.de
The Erysiphales form a well delimited order of
phytopathogenic ascomycetes with about 650 taxa
occurring worldwide. As they represent a group of strongly
related fungi, which is relatively well-investigated, they are
selected to realise an integrated view on biodiversity data
of different kinds. Within the project, descriptive,
ecological, distributional and molecular data are collected
and linked with data available from traditional and modern
data sources. Information is gained from the material of
two major collections of Erysiphales in the herbaria of
Halle and München (label and specimen data including
sequence data) as well as from literature (descriptive data).
For the storage and maintenance of collected data the
database modules of DiversityWorkbench, the onlineinformation
system LIAS and the sequence data
management system ARB are used. Subsequent analysis of
data from the various sources is achieved via export to
various applications. The employment of new database
systems and informatics tools will simplify scientific
studies on the correlation and evolution of characters both
in a distributional and historical context.
274 - Reconsidered species and genus boundaries: How
molecular data influence the content of the database
M. Goeker * , A. Riethmueller & F. Oberwinkler
Lehrstuhl Spezielle Botanik/Mykologie, Botanisches
Institut, Universitaet Tuebingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 1,
72076 Tuebingen, Germany.
The GLOPP (Global Information System for the
Biodiversity of Plant Pathogenic Fungi,
Book of Abstracts 87