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Language: English, with bilingual summary in English and Welsh
This is a fully colour illustrated identification guide to all species recorded from Wales as well as providing distributional information and a conservation threat status. The smut fungi and their allies are a group of specialist plant pathogens. Eighty-one species are recorded from Wales, sixty-six on native plants. Twenty-nine species on native hosts are either considered to be extinct or threatened with extinction. Amounting to 44% of the total, the percentage lost or threatened is over twice as high as for any other studied plant or fungus group in Wales. Over 130 host/fungus interactions are recorded from the 13 Welsh Vice-counties. With little detailed long-term recording to establish population trends the threats identified stem almost exclusively from known small population sizes. Whilst superficially some might consider the extinction of parasitic species to be no great loss, the smut fungi are proving to possess useful biochemical pathways. Their selection pressure on plants may have led to the evolution of many genes for resistance that may be of value in crop protection.
