Dr Tom May is a Senior Mycologist at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. He has research interests in the taxonomy, identification, ecology and conservation of larger fungi, including co-ordination of the Interactive Catalogue of Australian Fungi. Tom is a member of the IAPT Nomenclature Committee for Fungi and the IUCN Species Survival Commission Fungi Specialist Group. He has been active in community conservation and natural history groups, and is currently the President of Fungimap.

Dr Kevin Thiele is the Curator of the Western Australian Herbarium. He has research interests in plant systematics (particularly Banksia, Rhamnaceae and Viola), conservation and ecology of grasslands and grassy woodlands, biodiversity informatics and interactive computer identification keys. Kevin is Adjunct Reader in the Centre for Biological Information Technology at the University of Queensland and has been the principal designer of the Lucid identification software.

Christopher Dunk worked on projects including FunKey and the national names list for fungi as a Research Assistant at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne from 2010 to 2013. Previously, he taught mycology and botany at La Trobe University. His own research interests include the ecology, taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of ectomycorrhizal fungi, primarily those associated with Nothofagus.

Simon Lewis worked on the FunKey project as a Technical Officer at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne from 2001 to 2004, and prior to this was involved in production of the Flora of Victoria and carried out research on algal taxonomy. Subsequently, he has worked as a Technical Writer in the occupational health and mining industries.

Tom May coded the characters of most genera, wrote and compiled the fact sheets for character states and taxa, and wrote the introductory information. Kevin Thiele drew and manipulated the illustrations for character states and prepared the illustrations in the introductory information, took the majority of the photographs, created initial templates for character and genus fact sheets, and wrote scripts for automatic creation of natural language generic descriptions from Lucid. Simon Lewis set up and maintained databases for images and character and taxon information, organised and carried out field work, and took photos. Christopher Dunk maintained databases, edited templates for fact sheets, and edited character images, image captions and fact sheets and contributed photos. Both Simon and Chris assisted with coding of genera. All four authors inserted and edited data and images in Lucid. Information on how we coded up the data matrix for the Key is provided under Data capture for FunKey.

For herbarium acronyms mentioned below see the list of abbreviations in the Glossay.

The Australian Biological Resources Study provided a generous grant towards the preparation of FunKey. Pat McCarthy at ABRS is particularly thanked for his perceptive and comprehensive editing of fact sheets and introductory text. The support of David Cantrill and Frank Udovicic at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne for the project over its long gestation is appreciated.

Special thanks to Niels Klazenga (MEL) for his considerable assistance with xml and html programming and image processing, and to Matt Taylor (QBIT) who reprogrammed Fact Sheet Fusion templates for the fact sheets and was always helpful with answers to technical questions about Lucid.

Many of the photographs were donated for use in FunKey, and we thank all the photographers, especially those who so willingly responded to last minute calls for hard to find genera. In addition to those taken by the authors, photos in the key were provided by Barbara Archer (Norseman, W.A.), Neale Bougher (PERTH), David Catcheside (Flinders University, Adelaide, S.A.), Yu-Shyun Chang (Malaysia), Alex Fraser (Lismore, N.S.W.), Genevieve Gates (University of Tasmania), Paul George (Melbourne, Vic.), Frances Guard (Maleny, Qld), Don Hemmes (Hawai’i, U.S.A.), Niels Klazenga, Peter Koster & Cathy Cheadle (Ombersley, Vic.), Pauline Ladiges (University of Melbourne), Geoff Lay (Melbourne, Vic.), Taylor Lockwood (Florida, U.S.A.), Sapphire McMullan-Fisher (University of Tasmania), John May (Melbourne, Vic.), Kath Ralston (Melbourne, Vic.), Richard Robinson (Department of Environment and Conservation, W.A.), Nigel Sinnott (Sunshine West, Vic.), Katrina Syme (Denmark, W.A.), Haruki Takahashi (Japan), Alec Wood (formerly University of New South Wales), Tony Young (Blackbutt, Qld), Henk Voogt (Speewah, Qld) and Zhu Yang (Kunming Institute of Botany, China). Jenny Tonkin (whilst Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at K) provided photographs of the type of Austrolentinus tenebrosus. Thanks also to Sally Stewart (MEL) for facilitating use of images by Ilma Dunn, Ian McCann and Julie Strudwick, and additional images by Kath Ralston, which are held in the State Botanical Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, and reproduced with permission.

Special thanks to Kristin Sicha (while at MEL) for careful microphotography that provided the bulk of microscopic character images and for preparation of montages of images of spore colours under the microscope.

Unless otherwise indicated, all images are copyright the photographer or artist, and in particular photographs supplied by Paul George and Sapphire McMullan-Fisher have a Creative Commons attribution CC-BY-SA.

Useful feedback on distribution information was provided by Neale Bougher, Pam Catcheside (AD), Nigel Fechner (BRI), Genevieve Gates and David Ratkowsky (University of Tasmania), Heino Lepp (CANB), Bettye Rees (University of New South Wales) and Katrina Syme.

Useful feedback on various versions of FunKey was provided by Ian Bell (Melbourne, Vic.), Neale Bougher, Genevieve Gates, Teresa Lebel (MEL), Geoff Lay, Patrick Leonard (Qld), Sapphire McMullan-Fisher, Richard Robinson, Helen Rommelaar (MEL) and Kristin Sicha, and also by members of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria Fungi Group (particularly Arthur and Denise Carew, Paul George, Pat Grey, and Jurrie and Virgil Hubregtse) and students in the 2nd year Botany class at La Trobe University and the 3rd year Plant and Fungal Systematics course at the University of Melbourne.

Special thanks to Katrina Syme for valuable feedback from testing FunKey for identification of specimens of new and unusual taxa from south-west Western Australia; to Nimal Karunajeewa (MEL) and Beau Picking (Melbourne, Vic.) for testing FunKey against recently described species; and to Geoff Lay for extensive proof-reading and testing of the final version.

If you find an agaric that you think does not key out to the right genus, we’d like to hear about it. Other comments or corrections are also very welcome. Please send to:

Dr Tom May, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Private Bag 2000, South Yarra, Victoria 3141, Australia. tom.may@rbg.vic.gov.au

Please cite this work as: May, T.W., Thiele, K., Dunk, C.W. & Lewis, S.H. (2014). FunKey: an Interactive Guide to the Macrofungi of Australia. Key to Agarics. Version 1. Identic, Brisbane & ABRS, Canberra.