About authors

Country: Italy. Matteo Gelardi is a fungal taxonomist and systematic mycologist enrolled in the Italian National Register for Professional Mycologists (n° 2267) and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Associazione Micologica Ecologica Romana APS (AMER APS). He is a specialist of boletoid mushrooms (boletes) and related taxa (order Boletales, Basidiomycota) worldwide, with a particular emphasis on representative families such as Boletaceae, Paxillaceae, Suillaceae, and Gomphidiaceae. His experience resulted from extensive field research in several natural habitats on three different continents, including Europe (Italy, the UK, and France), Asia (China), and Australia. In addition, he is currently investigating the bolete diversity of the Dominican Republic (Caribbean, Central America). Field and lab research carried out over the past 20 years led him to the discovery, identification, and naming of several new fungal genera and species, mostly in the order Boletales. As a lecturer, he gave several talks on mycological topics in national (Italy) and international (China) symposia, and as a teacher, he performed a relevant number of basic and advanced courses on mycology for both amateur mushroom pickers and professional mycologists involved in the supervision and processing of wild mushrooms for trade. Matteo currently boasts roughly 55 scientific publications in both local/regional and prestigious international peer-reviewed scientific journals, and his publishing track record also includes two single-authored book chapters edited by Springer and Elsevier, respectively. Matteo currently holds the position of fungal taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

GIampaolo Simonini

Country: Italy. Giampaolo is a main mechanical engineer and amateur mycologist focused on photography, microscopy studies, molecular biology, and phylogenetics. As a lecturer, he held specialized courses and field activities related to Boletales for ASL mycologists. He actively collaborates with various specialists from the Universities of Turin, Innsbruck, Tula, St. Petersburg, Uppsala, Regensburg, Madrid, Guatemala City, and Haifa. He made many mycological trips in Europe and in Guatemala. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Bresadola Mycological Association and of the Editorial Board of the Italian journal Rivista di Micologia. He studied and published, with molecular and phylogenetic insights, fifteen species and four genera new to science and published with colleagues Vol. 1 of the Photographic Atlas of Italian Fungi (2000) and Vol. 8 of the Fungi Europaei Series C (Xerocomus, 2003). Since 1984 he has been author or co-author of about seventy articles published in international scientific journals.