Fungi have been often neglected, despite the fact that they provided penicillin, lovastatin and many other important medicines. They are an understudied, but essential, fascinating and biotechnologically useful group of organisms. The study of fungi in northern Thailand has been carried out by us since 2005. These studies have been diverse, ranging from ecological aspects, phylogenetics with the incorportation of molecular dating, taxonomy (including morphology and chemotaxonomy) among a myriad of microfungi, to growing novel mushrooms, and DNA-based identification of plant pathogens. In this paper, advances in understanding the biodiversity of fungi in the region are discussed and compared with those further afield. Many new species have been inventoried for the region, but many unknown species remain to be described and/or catalogued. For example, in the edible genus Agaricus, over 35 new species have been introduced from northern Thailand, and numerous other taxa await description. In this relatively well known genus, 93% of species novelty is apparent. In the microfungi, which are relatively poorly studied, the percentage of novel species is, surprisingly, generally not as high (55–96%). As well as Thai fungi, fungi on several hosts from Europe have been also investigated. Even with the well studied European microfungi an astounding percentage of new taxa (32–76%) have been discovered. The work is just a beginning and it will be a daunting task to document this astonishingly high apparent novelty among fungi.

中文翻译：

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泰国惊人的多样性：泰国北部多达96％的真菌可能是新颖的

尽管真菌提供了青霉素，洛伐他汀和许多其他重要药物，但它们经常被忽视。它们是未被充分研究的但必不可少的，令人着迷且在生物技术上有用的生物体。自2005年以来，我们一直在泰国北部开展真菌研究。这些研究范围广泛，涉及生态方面，与分子测年不相称的系统发育学，无数微真菌之间的分类学（包括形态学和化学分类学）到植物生长。新型蘑菇，以及基于DNA的植物病原体鉴定。本文将讨论该地区真菌生物多样性的研究进展，并与更远的领域进行比较。该地区已盘查了许多新物种，但仍有许多未知物种有待描述和/或编目。姬松茸，从泰国北部引进了超过35个新物种，还有许多其他类群正在等待描述。在这个相对知名的属中，物种新颖性的93％是显而易见的。令人惊讶的是，在研究较少的微型真菌中，新物种的比例通常不那么高（55 – 96％）。除泰国真菌外，还对欧洲一些寄主上的真菌进行了调查。即使对欧洲的微型真菌进行了充分研究，也发现了惊人的百分比的新分类单元（32 – 76％）。这项工作仅仅是开始，要记录真菌中这种惊人的高表象新颖性，将是一项艰巨的任务。