Fungal networks made of humans: UNITE, FESIN, and frontiers in fungal ecology.

The recent bloom of fungal community ecology can be credited in large part to the development of molecular tools for identification of fungi (Koljalg et al., 2005). These tools have been largely self-assembled, as individual researchers have borrowed techniques from other fields such as molecular systematics and medical diagnostics and applied them to particular studies. As a result, the development of the field has had some resemblance to an unplanned boomtown; growth has been breathtakingly rapid but weak on development of coordinated infrastructure. To address these challenges, researchers have started to assemble into larger networks. Two such groups, the Fungal Environmental Sampling and Informatics Network (FESIN; http:// www.bio.utk.edu/fesin/title.htm) and the User-friendly Nordic ITS Ectomycorrhizal database group (UNITE; http://unite. ut.ee/) held a joint meeting in September in Dragør, Denmark to struggle with the problems of building and maintaining infrastructure for the burgeoning field of fungal ecology.