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This volume is part of the series Biodiversity of Poland, which began with a checklist of Polish vascular plants (Mirek et al. 2002). Four already published volumes of the series are devoted to fungi in the traditional, broad sense (cf. Kirk et al. 2001). The larger Basidiomycetes (Wojewoda 2003), larger Ascomycetes (Chmiel 2006), lichens and lichenicolous fungi (Faltynowicz 2003) and slime moulds (Drozdowicz et al. 2003) are discussed in the checklists already published. Other groups of fungi of the Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Chytridiomycota, Glomeromycota, Hypochytriomycota, Oomycota, Plasmodiophoromycota and Zygomycota, as well as anamorphic fungi which belong mostly to the Ascomycota, are the focus of this study. These are traditionally referred to as microscopic fungi (micromycetes).
Compared to the macromycetes, micromycetes are richer in species and more diversified biologically as well as ecologically. They include both biotrophic parasites of plants, insects and other organisms, including species pathogenic to humans and vertebrates, and saprobic species, living on dead organic matter. Relevant data can therefore be found in many publications on the natural environment, in an impressive body of phytopathological publications connected with research into the aetiology and control of plant diseases, in studies of aerophytic fungi and fungi used in biotechnological processes, and in the literature on the physiology and genetics of certain species.
