The Macrofungi Collection Consortium

Digitization TCN: The Macrofungi Collection Consortium: Unlocking a Biodiversity Resource for Understanding Biotec Interactions, Nutrient Cycling and Human Affairs

Project Summary

The Macrofungi Collection Consortium: Unlocking a Biodiversity Resource for Understanding Biotic Interactions, Nutrient Cycling and Human Affairs

Mushrooms and related fungi (macrofungi) play a critical role in the lives of plants and animals, including humans, yet their diversity is underestimated. Understanding this diversity will be critical in analyzing impacts of habitat change, nutrient cycling in ecosystems, and distributions and diversity of host organisms. Scientists in the U.S. have been studying these fungi for the past 150 years, resulting in a legacy of approximately 1.4 million dried scientific specimens conserved in 35 institutions in 24 states. These institutions have now joined in an effort to digitize and share online all data associated with macrofungi specimens. The resulting resource will enable a national census of macrofungi, never before attempted, and will allow researchers to better understand the diversity of these organisms and the relationship between macrofungi and the organisms with which they form intimate relationships.

Organized into clubs across the country, citizen mycologists play an important role in documenting macrofungi diversity, and these enthusiastic individuals are the conduit between professional scientists and the general public for critical information about wild edible and poisonous fungi. Citizen mycologists will join the collections institutions in this project to help to create the on-line resource. The project will fund two workshops for high school teachers to promote classroom study of fungi. University students employed by the project will gain work experience in digitization and formal training about fungi. Students will share the knowledge they gain through oral and video presentations. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (https://www.idigbio.org).

Current Research

Herbarium collections of fungi with conspicuous spore-bearing structures commonly known as macrofungi (e.g., mushrooms, boletes, puffballs, club fungi, morels, stink horns, truffles and cup fungi) are the subject of this Thematic Collections Network. We propose to unite established and nascent collections of macrofungi into the Macrofungi Collections Consortium (MaCC) of 35 institutions that collectively will digitize collection information from about 700,000 specimen labels, capture 110,000 images of fungal specimens and digitize about 500,000 critical ancillary items such as photographs, field notes and fieldbook pages. The result will be a dataset of almost 1.4 million enriched specimen records that includes essentially all the macrofungal collections deposited in U.S. herbaria during the past 150 years. The data generated through this project will allow researchers to address the questions: To what extent do the diversity and distribution of macrofungi determine the diversity and distribution of the organisms with which they form commensal or symbiotic relationships, and by extension, how will changes in macrofungal diversity and distribution affect those organisms and ultimately human affairs?

Since the project began in July 2013, we have assembled approximately 500,000 specimen records from 22 institutions that are now are shared through the project portal, the MycoPortal (mycoportal.org). To date, the 14 institutions participating in the first year of the grant have collectively imaged labels and created skeletal data files for 21,563 specimens; fully databased 4408 specimens; imaged 262 (mostly type) specimens; digitized 52,444 fieldbook records, and digitized 8527 ancillary items such as photographic slides, sketches and field notes. Training sessions were held for representatives of all first year participants, and a 125 page procedures manual was prepared and circulated to all participants.

A number of activities have been carried out for the citizen mycologist community, including lectures, workshops, and posting content for this audience to the MycoPortal. This content includes all voucher images and observational records for the past twenty years of Northeast Mycology North American Mycological Association forays; 17 state or regional checklists and 9 taxon-based checklists created by citizen mycologists, and digitized images of approximately 1715 authoritatively named images living fungi. The project P.I.s and staff conducted a workshop for citizen mycologists on how to collect and document specimens of macrofungi for scientific study in December 2012. The documents prepared for this workshop have been posted to the MycoPortal.

Project Leadership

Project Sponsor: New York Botanical Garden

Principal Investigator (PI): Barbara Thiers

Collaborating Award PIs: Rytas Vilgalys, Meredith Blackwell, Peter White, Richard Baird

NSF Award Number

1207526

Project Website

http://www.nybg.org/science/new_20120723.php
http://mycoportal.org

Collaborators Map

https://www.idigbio.org/content/digitization-tcn-macrofungi-collection-consortium-collaborator-map

Project Collaborators

Brigham Young University
College of the Atlantic
Cornell University
Davis & Elkins College
Denver Botanic Garden
Duke University
Eastern Illinois University
Field Museum of Natural History
Harvard University, Farlow Herbarium
Iowa State University
Louisiana State University & Agricultural and Mechanical College
Miami University
Middle Georgia State College - E&O participation
New York Botanical Garden
New York State Museum
North Carolina State University
Oregon State University
Purdue University
Rutgers University
San Francisco State University
State University of New York at Cortland
State University of New York at Syracuse
University of Arizona
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of Central Oklahoma
University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Natural History Survey
University of Maryland
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota, Bell Museum of Natural History
University of Montana
University of North Carolina
University of South Alabama
University of Tennessee
University of Washington
University of Wyoming
Utah State University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University