The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity created a new awareness of the economic impact of living organisms. Regulators and quarantine specialists in governments all over the world now scrutinise dots on maps, as real-time online disease mapping and prediction models allow us to track (and try to prevent) the spread of diseases across borders. Woodlands are more managed, include less genetic diversity, and seem to be more susceptible to rapidly spreading disease. Different jurisdictions use different terminology, Biosecurity, Alien Invasive Species, Quarantine, but it is now commonplace to see large signs in airports, along highways, and on public hiking trails, warning citizens not to accidentally or deliberately facilitate the spread of unwanted pests or microbes. With the ophiostomatoid fungi, scientists have to cope with the overlapping behaviour of a triumvirate of kingdoms, the fungi, the animals (bark beetles, mites or nematodes), and how all of these impact trees in our forests and cities.

This book includes 21 papers divided among five themes, plus an appendix. It is a sequel to Ceratocystis and Ophiostoma: Taxonomy, Ecology, and Pathogenicity, published by the APS PRESS in 1993, and like that book is derived from an international symposium, this one held on North Stradbroke Island, Australia prior to the 9th International Mycological Congress. A year before this volume was completed, mycological taxonomy formally abandoned the historical two name system, known as dual nomenclature, and we are now adopting a single name binomial system. The appendix to this book provides a preliminary view of the nomenclature of the ophiostomatoid fungi using the new single name system. In an attempt at consistency, this naming system is used in all chapters.

Ophiostomatoid Fungi: Expanding Frontiers

Preface

Part 1: Taxonomy & Phylogeny

The ophiostomatoid fungi: their dual position in the Sordariomycetes
Emerging lineages in the Ophiostomatales
An overview of Leptographium and Grosmannia
Ceratocystis: emerging evidence for discrete generic boundaries
Ceratocystis species in the Ceratocystis fimbriata complex

Part 2: Biodiversity

Ophiostomatoid fungi and their associations with bark beetles in Japan
Ophiostomatoid fungi associated with conifer-infesting bark beetles in China
Ophiostomatoid fungi associated with the Eastern Himalayan spruce bark beetle,
     Ips schmutzenhoferi, in Bhutan and their pathogenicity to Picea spinulosa and
     Pinus wallichiana
Ophiostomatoid fungi and blue-stain in New Zealand
Ophiostomatoid associates of spruce-infesting bark beetles in North America
Ceratocystis species on the African continent, with particular reference to C.
    albifundus, an African species in the C. fimbriata sensu lato species complex

Part 3: Ecology & Pathology

Conifer defense against insects and fungi
Pine decline in the southeastern United States and the involvement of bark beetles      and ophiostomatoid fungi
Mites associated with bark beetles and their hyperphoretic ophiostomatoid fungi
Taxonomy and ecology of ophiostomatoid fungi associated with Protea
     infructescences

Part 4: Economic & Applied Aspects

Ceratocystis and Ophiostoma: international spread, new associations and plant
    health
Wood market issues relating to blue-stain caused by ophiostomatoid fungi in
    Canada
The discovery of Ophiostoma tetropii with the Brown Spruce Longhorn Beetle
    (Tetropium fuscum) in Halifax, Canada
Cartapip and the use of albino strains of Ophiostoma for pulping and blue-stain
    control
Canadian experiences with biocontrol of blue-stain in logs using albino
    ophiostomatoid fungi

Part 5: Frontiers

Towards ophiostomatoid genomics

Appendix

A nomenclator for ophiostomatoid genera and species in the Ophiostomatales and
    Microascales