The power of citizen science to advance fungal conservation
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Review › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS-based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Conservation Letters |
| Antal sider | 13 |
| ISSN | 1755-263X |
| DOI | |
| Status | E-pub ahead of print - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
We thank the European Section of the Society for Conservation Biology and the Mycological Society of America (MSA) for supporting symposia that inspired this manuscript, at the 2018 European Congress of Conservation Biology in Jyväskylä, Finland and at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the MSA in Gainesville, Florida, respectively. We would like to acknowledge members of the Research Group MIND.Funga, including Genivaldo Alves‐Silva, Diogo Henrique Costa‐Rezende, Thiago Kossmann, and Mahatmã Titon. We thank Inge Somhorst, coordinator of the Dutch Mushroom Monitoring Program, for her input on Section 3.3. The following funding agencies supported this research: U.S. National Science Foundation (DEB‐2018098 to D.H., DEB‐2018215 to C.A.Q.); Czech Science Foundation (grant 21‐06446S); Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (2022.10103.BD to S.P.C. through national funds and ESF, UIDB/04004/2020 to S.C.G.), National Institutes of Health (grant no. T32‐AI052080 via the Tri‐I MMPTP Fellowship, to L.L.); National Geographic Society (Mushrooms of Kenya, to M.N.M.); Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa e Inovação do Estado de Santa Catarina (FAPESC) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (PRONEM 2020TR733 for MIND.Funga, PQ310150/2022‐1 to E.R.D.S.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
ID: 388544532