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Abstract
A major goal of the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life project is to create a searchable database <http://aftol.umn.edu> of selected ultrastructural and biochemical characters from published and new data for use in phylogenetic and other analyses. While developing this database such issues as evaluating specimen fixation quality in published micrographs, organizing data to accommodate characters that were dependent on location and developmental stage, and requiring accountability of data contributors were addressed. Character states for three traits, septal pore apparatus, nuclear division and spindle pole body cycle, are illustrated, and character states are resolved with maximum parsimony and plotted on a summary cladogram of known phylogenetic relationships of the Fungi. The analysis illustrates the inherent phylogenetic signal of these characters, the paucity of comparable characters and character states in subcellular studies and the challenges in establishing a comprehensive structural and biochemical database of the Fungi.
This research was financed by the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life project, NSF grant EF-0228671 to D.J. McLaughlin and the NSF Research Coordination Network: a phylogeny for kingdom Fungi (NSF 0090301) to M. Blackwell, J.W. Spatafora and J.W. Taylor. The authors thank J. Coyne and D. Johnson for their programming expertise, K.A.T. Silverstein for his assistance with the database model, and K. Kirkeby and A. Gale for their drawings. We also want to thank the many participants in the AFTOL project and the Deep Hypha Research Coordination Network who contributed their time and ideas to developing the Structural and Biochemical Database.