Rare Fungi in Plain Sight: Leveraging the Power of Community Science for Biodiversity Studies

Over the past three years, a collaborative partnership between community scientists and academic mycologists, organized through the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDiS) and funded by the California Institute for Biodiversity, has transformed our understanding of California’s macrofungal diversity. Together, we have documented, DNA barcoded, and accessioned more than 11,000 fungal collections into the HAY Fungarium at California State University East Bay, likely making HAY the fastest growing fungarium on the globe. While a complete accounting of species encountered will take years to complete, over 4000 unique DNA barcode sequences have been recovered, greatly expanding the documented and sequenced fungal diversity of the state. In addition to expanding the known distribution for species previously reported from California, these collections represent numerous first reports for the state and in many cases reveal cryptic species diversity hidden in plain sight. Importantly, many of these collections originate from regions of California that were previously undocumented for fungal diversity, filling in critical geographic and taxonomic gaps. This project demonstrates the power of pairing rigorous scientific approaches with a community-based sampling network to create an efficient, inclusive, and scalable pathway for rapid and thorough documentation of understudied organismal groups.

Speaker: Brian Perry, California State University East Bay