Boletales

The Boletales are an order of Agaricomycetes containing over 1300 species with a diverse array of fruiting body types. The boletes are the best known members of this group, and until recently, the Boletales were thought to only contain boletes. The Boletales are now known to contain distinct groups of agarics, puffballs, and other fruiting-body types. The order Boletales originally was created to describe boletes, but based on micromorphological and molecular phylogenetic characteristics, a large number of nonbolete species have recently been reclassified to belong to this group, as well. The order also includes some gilled mushrooms, in the families Gomphidiaceae, Serpulaceae, Tapinellaceae, Hygrophoropsidaceae, and Paxillaceae, which often have the same flesh texture as the boletes, spore-bearing tissue which is also easily separable from the cap, and similar microscopic characteristics of spores and cystidia. Taxonomic studies using secondary metabolites and later molecular phylogenetic evidence moved several physically dissimilar groups into Boletales, including the Sclerodermataceae (earthballs) and the Rhizopogonaceae (false truffles). Phylogenetic analyses shows the Sclerodermataceae, Boletinellaceae and Gyroporaceae appear to form a discrete group within the Boletales, and together with the Pisolithaceae, and the Astraceae, are grouped under the suborder Sclerodermatineae. Thus, the boletes of Boletinellus and Phlebopus are more closely related to earthballs of Scleroderma than to Boletus. Similarly, the bolete genus Suillus is more closely related to the agarics and false truffles of Chroogomphus, Gomphidius, and Rhizopogon than to Boletus. In some older classification systems, a part of the family Boletaceae was separated to form the family Strobilomycetaceae. However, more recent molecular genetics studies have found it to be an unnatural grouping. According to the 2008 (10th) edition of the Dictionary of the Fungi, the Boletales comprise 17 families, 96 genera, and 1316 species.