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  1. Authors: M. Catherine Aime, Andrew N. Miller, Takayuki Aoki, Konstanze Bensch, Lei Cai, Pedro W. Crous, David L. Hawksworth, Kevin D. Hyde, Paul M. Kirk, Robert Lücking, Tom W. May, Elaine Malosso, Scott A. Redhead, Amy Y. Rossman, Marc Stadler, Marco Thines…

Mycology research on the front line of environmental and health challenges

Mycology crucially contributes to the understanding of the raising threat that fungi present for humans, plants and animals, as well as their role in ecology and environment diversity. David Hawksworth, Editor-in-Chief, and Wieland Meyer, President of the International Mycological Association, tell us more in interview blog.

Dark fungi: discovery and recognition of unseen fungal diversity

This topical collection, compiled by Robert Lücking and David Hawksworth, flags papers that in some way relate to dark fungi taxonomy and nomenclature, including methodological approaches, nomenclature, and associated topics such as important resources, the extent of unknown fungal diversity, or aspects of species concepts in lineages only known from sequence data.

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Mycology at Springer Nature

At Springer Nature, we are committed to raising the quality of academic research across Microbiology. We've now created a new page, highlighting our mycology journals and mycology content. 

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Aims and scope

IMA Fungus, founded in 2010, is the flagship journal of the International Mycological Association (IMA). The IMA represents the interests of mycology and mycologists worldwide, through a series of regional and national organizations, and is responsible for the now four-yearly International Mycological Congresses (IMCs). The journal considers contributions from all areas of mycology expected to be of interest to the wider mycological community, from basic research to applications. It also includes editorials, news, correspondence, reports of mycological meetings, information on awards and mycologists, and book reviews. IMA Fungus is mandated as the journal in which formal proposals relating to the rules on the naming of fungi or protected lists of names are to be published.  

Editor-in-Chief

David Hawksworth

David has wide interests in the systematics, diversity, and ecology of fungi, especially ascomycetes (including lichen fungi), but also their overall classification and improvements in nomenclatural systems. Amongst other things, he pioneered the use of lichens as bioindication or air pollutants, showed what a rich source lichens were for associated fungi, demonstrated how species-rich a single site could be for fungi by field-work over several decades, and established the use of fungi in forensic investigations. He was involved in preparing three editions of the Dictionary of the Fungi, and is well-known as an editor of scientific journals and texts. David was the last Director of the International Mycological Institute, and now holds honorary research positions at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and The Natural History Museum London.

Senior Editors

Paola Bonfante

Paola has spent much of her scientific career studying the intimate interactions between fungi and plants, also between bacteria and fungi, using cellular and molecular approaches. She first described how plant cells accommodate mycorrhizal fungi following penetration, and by applying DNA technologies, has enhanced our knowledge of mycorrhizal diversity in nature and in cultivated soils, and discovered endobacteria inside mycorrhizal fungi which may modulate traits of their fungal hosts. She contributes to international projects focused to the genome sequencing of diverse mycorrhizal fungi, and is renowned for her expertise on cellular and molecular biology of plant/fungal interactions and the dynamics of fungal populations. Many of her PhD students are now active in researching related fields, and she is currently Professor Emerita of Plant Biology in the University of Turin in Italy.

Matthew Fisher

Matthew researches emerging pathogenic fungi, using an evolutionary framework to investigate the factors driving emerging fungal diseases across human, wildlife, and plant species. Wildlife and their environments play a key role in emerging human infectious disease (EID) by providing a 'zoonotic pool' from which previously unknown pathogens emerge. Human action also impacts on patterns of fungal disease via the perturbation of natural systems, the introduction of pathogenic fungi into new environments, and rapid natural selection for phenotypes – including ones resistant to antimicrobial drugs. Matthew heads a research group at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, St Mary's Hospital, Imperial College London, focused on developing genomic, epidemiological and experimental models to uncover the factors driving these EIDs, and to attempt to develop new methods of diagnosis and control.

Robert Lücking

Robert’s research focuses on the biodiversity, evolution, ecology, biogeography, systematics, and uses of lichenized and other fungi, in particular tropical lineages, including molecular phylogenetic and genomic approaches. He has a special interest in the discovery of novel fungal lineages known only from environmental sequence data, and pioneered the use of foliicolous communities as indicators of habitat disturbance in the tropics. Robert has extensive field experience in Central and South America, is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster, and a member of the IUCN Lichen Specialist Group. He was formerly based at the Field Museum, Chicago, but in 2015 was appointed Curator (Kustos) for Lichens, Fungi and Bryophytes at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum (BGBM) of the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany.

Wieland Meyer

Wieland’s research focuses on the evolution, phylogeny, speciation, population genetics, genomics, molecular epidemiology, genotyping, and molecular identification of human pathogenic fungi, and the understanding of fungal pathogenesis on a molecular level. He is leading an international research team investigating the global epidemiology of the Cryptococcus neoformans/C. gattii species complex, and an international consortium of microbiology reference laboratories establishing a quality controlled fungal DNA barcode database as a basis for precision-based diagnosis and personalized medicine. In July 2023, he was appointed as the new director of the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, an institute of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Marcio L. Rodrigues

Marcio L. Rodrigues has been working on fungal physiology and cell biology for the last few years. His primary interest is fungal secretion, especially extracellular vesicles. He is also interested in discussing international collaboration mechanisms, reasonable policies for publication charges, raising funds for neglected diseases and using scientific metrics as a tool for decision making. 

Brenda Wingfield

Brenda’s research has focussed on the global movement and evolution of fungal pathogens, particularly those on trees.  She has been responsible for several major advances in fungal taxonomy and phylogeny, including the introduction of DNA-based research tools in South Africa. Her research group is one of the foremost in the study of distribution and population dynamics of tree pathogens using DNA markers.  In addition, she pioneered fungal genomics in southern Africa and was responsible for the first fungal genome sequencing in Africa.  Brenda is one of the founding members of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of the University of Pretoria, now a key world centre for investigations into tree diseases worldwide, and where she holds the DST-NRF SARChI research professorship in fungal genomics.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    5.4 - 2-year Impact Factor
    5.6 - 5-year Impact Factor
    2.067 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    1.616 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    17 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    194 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    411,171 downloads
    375 Altmetric mentions