Anyone interested in fungi has probably spent some time surfing the web in search of useful, interesting, or just plain entertaining mycological information. Inevitably, this leads to sites that offer collections of topical interest. Although search engines may have supplanted the need for link compendia, link sites still offer access to specialized information organized all in one place. Moreover, if properly administrated, these sites can serve as "gatekeepers," selecting the best and leaving out the worst.
How does one evaluate mycology link sites? For the purposes of this article three criteria were used: number of links, dead links, and site design and organization. After wading through a large list of candidates, here are the top mycology link sites.
Index of Fungi Pages or Photographs on the Net
With a whopping 14,670 direct links, no other site comes close to the Index of Fungi Pages or Photographs on the Net in terms of the sheer number of links. With this many links, it is inevitable that some will be broken – and some are. However, the vast majority are active. The ones that don't work seem to be the result of a small number of sites that are no longer active, but are linked-to a number of times.
The organization is straightforward, especially if one wants to look for information on a particular species. The site has alphabetical lists by genus and species, usually with more than one link per entry. So, if one link doesn't work for a species, chances are good that another one will. There is also a common name index.
Most of the links lead to photographs, sometimes with accompanying information, sometimes not. The information is in a variety of languages. Started in 1999 and last updated in 2008, it's not perfect and there is nothing fancy about it, but the Index still has a lot to offer.
MykoWeb
Mykoweb, with well over 800 links (mostly focused on mushrooms) is one of the original and still one of the best mycology link sites. Created and maintained by Michael Wood, Mykoweb has been on-line since 1995 and was updated as recently as May of 2009.
The site is attractively designed and well organized. Several indexing schemes are in place to make it easy to find items of interest. Navigating the site, checking out links to general mycological information, fungal art, photos and recipes is a pleasurable experience. With reference to the aforementioned "gatekeeper" role, Mykoweb assigns an animated red check mark to sites deemed of special note.
The End of Mycology and Fungus Link Sites?
There are many more mycology link sites in existence, but most have fewer (much fewer) than several hundred links. Others, once proud compilations of mycology and mushroom links, have gone dormant without being updated in a long time (years even).
It would seem that the implementation of ever better search technology is rendering the link site obsolete. A case in point is Mykoweb itself. According to Michael Wood, the links section will soon be pruned to a "best of" set of perhaps 100 links. Better check 'em out while you still can.
Philip McIntosh - The author holds a B.Sc. in Botany and Chemistry and an M.A in Biology and he has thirty + years of experience in science and industry.
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