FUNGI OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Fungi can be found growing in a vast diversity of environments and substrates. Macrofungi, commonly known as mushrooms, are fungi that have fruiting bodies. Malaysia is one of the countries to have great diversity of macrofungi living in diverse habitat. In Peninsular Malaysia, the effort to document macrofungal diversity of various forest types have been continuously carried out. In this presentation, a short review of the history, documentation activities and conservation efforts on macrofungi were presented. New species and records of macrofungi that were found in Peninsular Malaysia were illustrated, especially the findings of some interesting and noteworthy species. Some of these macrofungi which are endemic, rare and threatened were also highlighted in this paper. The importance and roles of macrofungi in balancing the ecological services in our forest ecosystem were discussed.

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THI BEE KIN

Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM)

Thi Bee Kin, a Research Officer of Forest Research Institute Malaysia. She joined FRIM after graduating from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) with Master of Science (MSc) degree in 2004. She has more than 20 years of working experience doing research at Mycology and Pathology Branch. She started working on the inventory of the fungi of Peninsular Malaysia in 2006 under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010) until now. She is currently leading several projects, both international and local research, such as research on mycorrhizal fungi community structure in plantation forest, documentation of the diversity of macrofungi in Endau-Rompin National Park and documentation of macrofungi of community forest. She had published/co-published in 56 journals, books, technical and non-technical papers, as well as in oral presentations and posters nationally and internationally. She is the author for two guidebooks: A Guidebook to the Macrofungi of Fraser’s Hill and A Guidebook to the Macrofungi of Tasik Bera. She is the co-supervisor for four MSc students and two BSc students from UKM and UPM. Previously, she was also nominated as Research Fellow of Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI), Tsukuba, Japan and as Visiting Scholar at Yunnan Academy of Forestry and Grassland (YAFG), Kunming, China to work on fungi.