Champignons de la zone alpine– Contribution à l’étude des champignons supérieurs alpins

Description

Introduction

The alpine fungus is represented by diverse and often original communities of species, adapted to the biotic and abiotic constraints of the many ecological niches they occupy.
Their roles in these highly selective ecosystems and their status as markers of environments threatened by global change make alpine fungi a major conservation issue, which can only be adequately addressed by a sound taxonomic knowledge. Unfortunately, the latter remains very fragmentary, with no dedicated ‘Flora’ available in French since the seminal work by FAVRE (1955). At a national level, the most structured source of taxonomic data is the pioneering work of Robert Kühner and Denise Lamoure, who devoted a large part of their careers to studying and describing these alpine species. It should be noted that the Lamoure herbarium, preserved in Lyon, is one of the few European collections not to have already been sampled for sequencing. The monumental Atlas of Cortinaria (ADC) has also contributed to knowledge in this field, by including several species of cortinaria from these environments, with the genus Cortinarius being particularly well represented in ZA. The aim of this book is to help update our knowledge of French alpine fungi, by presenting over 200 recent sequenced collections of alpine fungi and sequencing all the reference alpine collections (types or, failing that, authentic material) from the Lamoure herbarium, the ADC and several major international herbaria. We are convinced that the knowledge presented in this book will have an international impact, as the Alpine ecosystems are represented well beyond the national territory and the Alpine arc: the Pyrenees for France and Spain, Scandinavia for Europe, but also more widely all the arctic-boreal regions.