Dan Eastwood, a fungal researcher at Swansea University who was not involved in the study, pointed out that fungi don't have to follow rules to exhibit a decay form. "The manuscript is very timely and provides evidence for what many people in the field have suspected for some time – that simple descriptors of wood decomposition do not necessarily reflect the diversity in decay strategies exhibited by fungi," he said. "This is particularly the case when discussing the brown rot wood decay mechanism where distantly related species have evolved superficially similar decay mechanisms. This manuscript uses whole genome sequence information to outline the argument for advancing our understanding of wood decomposition away from a simplistic white versus brown rot dichotomy."