The family Hydnaceae is a significant group of fungi in Cantharellales. In the recent decade, researchers are increasingly focus on the diversity of Hydnaceae and studies of new species and lineages in this group have been prolific around the world. Morphologically, the basidiocarps of species in the family can be cantharelloid, clavarioid, corticioid and so on. Ecologically, Cantharellus-Craterellus, Hydnum-Sistotrema sensu stricto and Clavulina-Membranomyces are three distinct ECM lineages in the family while most species of Sistotrema and Sistotremella are saprotrophic; besides, some genera with lichenicolous or lichenised nutritional modes are also embedded in Hydnaceae, they all play important roles in the material cycle of terrestrial ecosystems. In additon, culinary and medicinal mushrooms occur in Cantharellus, Clavulina, Craterellus and Hydnum. In recent years, the method of molecular phylogeny has been widely used in taxonomy of fungi. However, a comprehensive phylogeny based on a multiple-marker dataset for the entire Hydnaceae is still lacking and the delimitation, the morphology and ecological evolution as well as of the diversity of genera is also unclear, the species diversity of this taxa in China need a further research. 

Dr. Yuan Haisheng and their team from the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a systematic study of the Hydnaceae, especially the umbelliform fungi.  

The research confirmed or proposed the infrageneric subdivision within the genera Cantharellus, Craterellus and Hydnum based on morphological and phylogenetic analyses. The researchers integrated the global sequences data of Cantharellales fungi from GenBank database and first inferred five sequence fragment dataset based (LSU, ITS, mtSSU, RPB2 and TEF1) Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian phylogenies for the Cantharellales and reappeared the taxonomic status of Hydnaceae in the order. Seventeen genera included in Hydnaceae were confirmed according to the phylogenetic relationship. The phylogenetic status of genera Cantharellus, Craterellus, Hydnaceae and umbelliform fungi of Sistotrema in the family has been clarified. Phylogenetic relationship of taxa within Hydnaceae were further systematically sort out by fitting the morphology, ecology and phylogeny features. The evolution of ecological (from saprotrophic, lichenised/lichenicolous to ectomycorrhizal) and morphological (from bulbil-forming/resupinate, coralloid/clavarioid to umbelliform) characteristics of Hydnaceae species was preliminarily speculated. 

In their study, 29 fungal taxa were published, including eight new subgenera, seventeen new species, two synonyms and two newly recorded species. 

The research thus enriched the species diversity of this group of fungi in China. The study has important reference value for further exploring the co-evolution of this group of fungi and its host as well as the morphological and ecological evolution of fungi of others group.  

The study entitled "A phylogenetic overview of the Hydnaceae with new taxa from China" has been published in Studies in Mycology. The study is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Biodiversity Survey, observation and Assessment Plan of the Ministry of Ecological Environment.