10,000 marine fungi species waiting to be discovered!

This paper discusses the diversity of marine fungi. In the last 60 years, the number of identified marine fungi species has been multiplied by 5, and species are still being found on various substrata and unexplored habitats (particularly in the tropics). Various guesses on the number of marine fungi species are thought to be a gross underestimate, considering there are still unidentified species, endophytic and cryptic taxa. This review contains several fungal groups that have been poorly surveyed and therefore may be a potential source of more undiscovered marine species. Accounting for the potential sources, the number of marine fungi may in fact exceed 10,000 taxa.

The way that this paper was written made it difficult to comprehend in parts. Some of the sentence structure was hard to follow and other parts seemed to have no flow or direction, making for very wordy sentences that actually don’t say too much. I also found the tables to be a bit confusing, which they could have easily amended by using lined rows. Otherwise, an interesting review on marine fungi diversity and an eye-opening reminder of how little we truly know about marine microbiology.

Reference: Jones, E. (2011). Are there more marine fungi to be described?. Botanica Marina, 54(4).