Towards Mushroom Conservation in Canada
Despite the ecological importance of fungi, we still know little about their diversity in Canada.
One of the largest hurdles to implementing fungal conservation initiatives is the lack of information on where fungi are found.
As human impacts accelerate the speed of environmental change, it is crucial that we fill this major information gap to protect fungi.
Read the open access paper on the FACETS website.
To gain insight on the conservation status of Canadian macrofungi, we took advantage of the large, growing body of fungal biodiversity data from government research, citizen science, trained independent mycologists, universities, and museum biodiversity research.
The majority of Canadian macrofungi are data-deficient: we do not know their geographic distribution or habitat requirements, occurrence, or abundance.
For mushrooms that fruit only a few days of the year and are often difficult to identify, there is a lot of work to overcome the uncertainty of distinguishing under-sampling from true rarity.
Our work stresses the importance of building a strong network of professional and amateur mycologists to develop resources, disseminate information to make educated decisions, and advance conservation actions.
We found that several fungi can be prioritized; we present a short list for consideration for formal conservation assessment.
Read the paper — Macrofungal conservation in Canada and target species for assessment: a starting point by Anna Bazzicalupo, Susana C. Gonçalves, Rémi Hébert, Sigrid Jakob, Alfredo Justo, Gavin Kernaghan, Renée Lebeuf, Bruce Malloch, R. Greg Thorn, and Allison K. Walker as the Canadian Institute of Ecology and Evolution Fungal Conservation Working Group
