DESCRIPTIONS OF MEDICAL FUNGI

Descriptions of Medical Fungi
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PREFACE
The first edition of this book entitled Descriptions of Medical QAP Fungi was published
in 1992 by David Ellis, Steve Davis, Helen Alexiou, Tania Pfeiffer and Zabeta
Manatakis. The original concept was to provide all laboratories in the Royal College of
Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) Mycology Quality Assurance Program (QAP) with
a set of description sheets covering medically important fungi. A second edition entitled
Descriptions of Medical Fungi was released in 2007 by David Ellis, Steve Davis, Helen
Alexiou, Rosemary Handke and Robyn Bartley. We now provide an updated third
edition which includes new and revised descriptions. We have endeavoured to reconcile
current morphological descriptions with more recent phylogenetic studies, however
nomenclature changes in mycology are ongoing. To search for current accepted
fungal names go to Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org) and Mycobank (www.
mycobank.org).
Morphological Descriptions: These descriptions have by necessity been kept brief
and many have been based on descriptions by other authors. For further information
regarding any of the mycoses or pathogenic fungi mentioned, the reader is referred to
the citations provided. For the precise definitions of the mycological terminology used,
the reader is referred to Ainsworth and Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi (Kirk et al. 2008).
Classification of the Fungi
Kingdom Fungal Phyla Examples
Protozoa Myxomycota Slime moulds
Chromista Oomycota Pythium
Eumycota
Ascomycota
Basidiomycota
Chytridiomycota
Glomeromycota
Microsporidia
Zygomycota
Candida, Aspergillus, Scedosporium,
Fusarium, Paecilomyces, Penicillium,
Cladophialophora, Bipolaris, and other
hyphomycetes, including the dimorphic
fungi, dermatophytes, and Pneumocystis
(Taphrinomycotina).
Cryptococcus, Trichosporon, Malassezia.
Chytrids
Endomycorrhizal on plants
170 genera, 1300 species
Apophysomyces, Lichtheimia, Mucor,
Saksenaea, Rhizomucor, Rhizopus.
Fungi are now classified across three Kingdoms. Descriptions in this book are
limited to the Eumycota and include medically important representatives from the
Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and Zygomycota.