The Mycenaceae are a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of fungi in the order Agaricales

Agaricales

The fungal order Agaricales, also known as gilled mushrooms , or euagarics, contains some of the most familiar types of mushrooms. The order has 33 extant families, 413 genera, and over 13000 described species, along with five extinct genera known only from the fossil record...

. According to the Dictionary of the Fungi (10th edition, 2008), the family contains 10 genera

Genera

Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...

 and 705 species. This is one of several families that were separated from the Tricholomataceae

Tricholomataceae

The Tricholomataceae are a large family of mushrooms within the Agaricales. A classic "wastebasket taxon", the Tricholomataceae is inclusive of any white-, yellow-, or pink-spored genera in the Agaricales not already classified as belonging to the Amanitaceae, Lepiotaceae, Hygrophoraceae,...

 as a result of phylogenetic analyses. Taxa

Taxon

|thumb|270px|[[African elephants]] form a widely-accepted taxon, the [[genus]] LoxodontaA taxon is a group of organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement...

 in the Mycenaceae are saprobic, have a cosmopolitan distribution

Cosmopolitan distribution

In biogeography, a taxon is said to have a cosmopolitan distribution if its range extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. For instance, the killer whale has a cosmopolitan distribution, extending over most of the world's oceans. Other examples include humans, the lichen...

, and are found in almost all ecological zones.

The extinct genus Protomycena

Protomycena

Protomycena is an extinct monotypic genus of gilled fungus in the Mycenaceae family, of order Agaricales. At present it contains the single species Protomycena electra, known from a single specimen collected in an amber mine in the Cordillera Septentrional area of the Dominican Republic...

, described from Burdigalian

Burdigalian

The Burdigalian is, in the geologic timescale, an age or stage in the early Miocene. It spans the time between 20.43 ± 0.05 Ma and 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma...

 age Dominican amber

Dominican amber

Dominican amber is amber from the Dominican Republic. Resin from the extinct species Hymenaea protera is the source of Dominican amber and probably of most amber found in the tropics....

 found on the island of Hispaniola

Hispaniola

Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...

 is one of four known agaric genera in the fossil record.

Phylogeny

A large-scale phylogenetic analysis study of the Agaricales published by a consortium of mycologists in 2002 adopted the name Mycenaceae for a strongly supported clade

Clade

A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

 consisting of Dictyopanus, Favolaschia

Favolaschia

Favolaschia is a genus of fungi in the family Mycenaceae. The genus has a widespread distribution, and contains about 50 species....

, Mycena

Mycena

Mycena is a large genus of small saprotrophic mushrooms that are rarely more than a few centimeters in width. They are characterized by a white spore print, a small conical or bell-shaped cap, and a thin fragile stem. Most are gray or brown, but a few species have brighter colors. Most have a...

, Mycenoporella, Prunulus, Panellus

Panellus

Panellus is a genus of about 55 species of fungi in the Mycenaceae family.-Description:The fruit bodies of Panellus species are small- to medium-sized, and pleurotoid, meaning they grow on wood, have gills, and usually form semicircular or kidney-shaped caps that may be either directly attached to...

, Poromycena, and Resinomycena

Resinomycena

Resinomycena is a genus of fungi in the family Mycenaceae. The genus contains eight species found in North America....

. Dictyopanus has since been wrapped into Panellus, and both Poromycena and Prunulus into Mycena.