Diversity of Fungi and Fungus-Like Organisms in Tropical Forests

Author Biography

Steven L. Stephenson retired from the University of Arkansas in 2023, where he was a Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and taught at Fairmont State University for 27 years before moving to the University of Arkansas. During his academic career, he has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Himachal University in India, a Visiting Scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, and the William Evans Visiting Fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He also has received Fulbright Specialist awards to India and Vietnam. Stephenson has carried out research on eumycetozoans and fungi in the forests of India, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Peru, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica. He is the author or coauthor of more than 500 papers and 20 books on eumycetozoans, fungi, and various aspects of ecology. Samantha Chandranath Karunarathna is a Professor at the Center for Yunnan Plateau Biological Resources Protection and Utilization in the College of Biological Resource and Food Engineering of Qujing Normal University, Qujing, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China. Karunarathna has vast experience in fungal taxonomy, phylogeny, and their economic importance. He has published over 200 papers related to fungal taxonomy and phylogeny. He also received Yunnan Talent and Friendship Awards in 2022 and was recognized as one of the world’s top 2% scientists in 2022, 2023, and 2024, according to rankings by Stanford University. Changlin Zhao works in the College of Forestry at the Southwest Forestry University of the People’s Republic of China. His current research is focused on the taxonomy and phylogeny of the wood-decaying fungi (Basidiomycota). He received a Ph.D. degree from Beijing Forestry University (2016), studied evolutionary biology at Harvard University as a joint Ph.D. during 2014 to 2015, and worked at Tsinghua University as a Senior Visiting Scholar from 2021 to 2022. He is the first author or corresponding author of more than 150 publications and five books (as first editor) in mycology. Arun Kumar Dutta is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Botany at Gauhati University, Assam, India. Prior to this position, he worked at West Bengal State University as a DST-Inspire Faculty Fellow. Dutta has received numerous prestigious awards, including the ISCA Young Scientist Award for 2017–2018 given by the Indian Science Congress Association (Section: Plant Sciences) and the DST-Inspire Faculty Award of the Department of Science and Technology, India, in the field of plant, animal, and agricultural Sciences (2018). He earned his Ph.D. in Botany with a specialization in mycology from the University of Calcutta, West Bengal, India, in 2017. Dutta began his research career by investigating the diversity of marasmioid and gymnopoid fungi of West Bengal, utilizing both morphological and molecular characteristics. He is currently focused on the molecular systematics of wild edible macrofungi in Eastern India and examining their potential as nutraceuticals. To date, he is the author of 100 peer-reviewed papers in national and international journals.