Produced by Keith Edkins, Mary Glenn Krause, Eric Lehtonen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Corrigendum applied at the wish of the principle author: in Key 3 the pointers to couplets 56 and 66 were the wrong way round and have been corrected in this edition. * * * * * KEYS TO FUNGI ON DUNG by M. J. RICHARDSON 165 Braid Road, EDINBURGH EH10 6JE and ROY WATLING Royal Botanic Garden, EDINBURGH EH3 5LR Published by the British Mycological Society PO Box 30, Stourbridge West Midlands DY9 9PZ © British Mycological Society 1997 Printed in Scotland by BPC-AUP Aberdeen Ltd ISBN 0 9527704 2 3 The first edition of these keys was published in the _Bulletin of the British Mycological Society_ 2, 18-43 (1968) and 3, 86-88, 121-124 (1969) in an attempt to bring together in one place information for the identification of coprophilous fungi which would be useful to teachers and others interested in these fungi. They were issued as a separate publication in 1972, and with corrections in 1974. They were reprinted in 1982 with additions. This latest edition is an update of all the earlier ones, with current nomenclature and recent references, and the inclusion of some additional species. M.J.R. R.W. December 1996 INTRODUCTION Coprophilous fungi are highly satisfactory for demonstrating the diversity and morphology of a group of related organisms within an ecological system. Representative genera of most major groups of fungi can usually be guaranteed to appear on dung after a period of incubation. There is no shortage of dung in our fields and woods, and this material will always produce characteristic fungi at whatever time of year it is collected.