Readers will perhaps be surprised to find a volume about fungi within a
handbook of vegetation science. Although fungi traditionally feature in
textbooks on botany, at least since Whittaker (1969), they have mostly
been categorised as an independent kingdom of organisms or, in contrast
to the animal and plant kingdom, as probionta together with algae and
protozoa. More relevant for ecology than the systematic separation of
fungi from plants is the different lifestyle of fungi which, in contrast
to most plants, live as parasites, saprophytes or in symbiosis.
Theoretical factors aside, there are also practical methodological
considerations which favour the distinction between fungal and plant
communities, as has been shown for example by Dörfelt (1974).
Despite their special position the coenology of fungi has been dealt
with in the handbook of vegetation science. It would be wrong to
conclude that we underestimate the important differences between fungal
and plant communities. The reasons for including the former are that
mycocoenology developed from phytocoenology, the similarity of the
methods and concepts still employed today and the close correlation
between fungi and plants in biocoenoses.