New Book on Australian Myxomycetes by U of A Researcher

Steve Stephenson

The book Secretive Slime Molds: Myxomycetes of Australia by Steve Stephenson

Steve Stephenson, a research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, has published a new book. Entitled Secretive Slime Molds: Myxomycetes of Australia, the book is a comprehensive monograph on Australian myxomycetes (also called slime molds), a group of fungus-like organisms.

In addition to introductory material relating to the biology, ecology and the history of study of this group of organisms in Australia, the book provides identification keys, descriptions and information on the known distribution for the more than 330 species of myxomycetes reported from Australia.

The book was published by CSIRO Publishing and the Australian Biological Resources Study program of the Australian Government, which is based in Canberra, Australia.

Stephenson began his studies of the myxomycetes of Australia in 1995 when he spent almost four months on the Australian overseas territory of Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean. Over the next two decades, he made numerous visits to mainland Australia and two other overseas territories (Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean), with the objective of documenting the occurrence of myxomycetes in every major region of Australia. He was assisted on this effort by his wife, Barbara, an instructor in college algebra at the U of A.

"Australia is a very large country, and we had the opportunity to see a major portion of it while carrying out this project," Stephenson said. "By Arkansas standards, much of Australia is rather desolate, and we certainly had to travel quite a lot. It was a truly interesting experience."

Stephenson started working on the book itself more than 15 years ago.

"There were times when I didn't think it would ever be finished, but the fact that the folks in Australia were very interested in having the book published provided the extra incentive needed to finally reach that goal," he said.

Stephenson is the author or coauthor of 18 books and more than 450 book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journals.

His research extends to more than just myxomycetes, since he has published extensively on forest ecology and fungi. One of his more recent books, Mushrooms of the Southeast, which he coauthored with former student Todd Elliott, was published in 2018 and has already gone into a second printing.