Mycology and Phycology: An Introductory Text

Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicine, and food as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection. Phycology is the scientific study of algae. Also known as algology and is a branch of life science and often is regarded as a subdiscipline of botany. Phycology is the study of algae, the primary photosynthetic organisms in freshwater and marine food chains. As a food source for zooplankton and filter feeding shellfish, the algae are an extremely important group. Phycology includes the study of prokaryotic forms known as blue-green algae or cyanobacteria. A number of microscopic algae also occur as symbionts in lichens. This well organized comprehensive text deals with the general characters of algae, that of various algal groups, the specialized habitats, the morphology and the reproduction of different members of different groups of algae. This book is the study of algae. Human interest in plants as food goes back into the origins of the species (homo sapiens) and knowledge of algae can be traced back more than two thousand years. However only in the last three hundred years has that knowledge developed into a rapidly developing science.