The need to engage with citizen scientists to study the rich fungal biodiversity in South Africa

Gryzenhout, Marieka

doi:10.1007/bf03449355

Cited by 7 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…It is the first step towards compiling an atlas for macrofungi, similar to what exists for other organisms in South Africa (for example, Harrison et al 1997). Such an atlas can also include distribution, ecological and biological data useful for diverse end users in governmental institutions, and those linked to conservation, ecology, academia and citizen science (Gryzenhout 2015). Additional products would be used to compile, for the first time, a red-list of macrofungi based on International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) criteria, and guidelines to protect them based on their biology.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Karst., is not present in previous publications or in PREM (Table 1). The checklist information can be used in education for the sustainable and safe use of fungal natural resources, to produce conservation awareness and regulation to protect naturally harvested species and habitats from over-harvesting (Gryzenhout et al 2010(Gryzenhout et al , 2012. Lastly, the lists will be instrumental to do gap assessments from the compiled data to help identify research needs in future, for example where to focus surveys and collections, revisions, and where the greatest gaps for species descriptions exist.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lastly, the lists will be instrumental to do gap assessments from the compiled data to help identify research needs in future, for example where to focus surveys and collections, revisions, and where the greatest gaps for species descriptions exist. A list will also enable citizen scientist collaboration and participation and make the study of fungi more transparent (Gryzenhout 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, approximately half of the records lodged in MushroomMap (http://adu. org.za/) represent fungi that could not be identified, whereas a great number of equally unknown fungi is posted on the Mushrooms for South Africa Facebook page (https:// www.facebook.com/groups/MushroomsSouthernAfrica/), or communicated by citizen scientists (Gryzenhout 2015). This great deficit or inability to name numerous South African macrofungi is indicative of the great diversity that we have, the large proportion that are still undiscovered, unstudied, and hence under-utilized, and the paucity of human capacity to do this (South African Fungal Diversity Network 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A first checklist of macrofungi for South Africa

Kinge¹,

Goldman²,

Jacobs³

et al. 2020

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Macrofungi are considered as organisms that form large fruiting bodies above or below the ground that are visible without the aid of a microscope. These fungi include most basidiomycetes and a small number of ascomycetes. Macrofungi have different ecological roles and uses, where some are edible, medicinal, poisonous, decomposers, saprotrophs, predators and pathogens, and they are often used for innovative biotechnological, medicinal and ecological applications. However, comprehensive checklists, and compilations on the diversity and distribution of mushrooms are lacking for South Africa, which makes regulation, conservation and inclusion in national biodiversity initiatives difficult. In this review, we compiled a checklist of macrofungi for the first time (excluding lichens). Data were compiled based on available literature in journals, books and fungorium records from the National Collection of Fungi. Even if the list is not complete due to numerous unreported species present in South Africa, it still represents an overview of the current knowledge of the macromycetes of South Africa. The list of names enables the assessment of gaps in collections and knowledge on the fungal biodiversity of South Africa, and downstream applications such as defining residency status of species. It provides a foundation for new names to be added in future towards developing a list that will be as complete as possible, and that can be used by a wide audience including scientists, authorities and the public.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A first checklist of macrofungi for South Africa

Kinge¹,

Goldman²,

Jacobs³

et al. 2020

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“…Therefore, sequence-based identification is going to become very rapidly important to a much wider community. While this trend is already very visible in Europe and North America, participative science (science projects implicating the participation of citizen scientists) are also emerging in other parts of the world (Gryzenhout 2015).…”

Section: The Growing Implication Of Citizen Sciencists In Sequence-bamentioning

confidence: 99%

The unbearable lightness of sequenced-based identification

Hofstetter

Buyck

Eyssartier³

et al. 2019

Fungal Diversity

106

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Using the basic GenBank local alignment search tool program (BLAST) to identify fungi collected in a recently protected beech forest at Montricher (Switzerland), the number of ITS sequences associated to the wrong taxon name appears to be around 30%, even higher than previously estimated. Such results rely on the in-depth re-examination of BLAST results for the most interesting species that were collected, viz. first records for Switzerland, rare or patrimonial species and problematic species (when BLAST top scores were equally high for different species), all belonging to Agaricomycotina. This paper dissects for the first time a number of sequence-based identifications, thereby showing in every detail-particularly to the user community of taxonomic information-why sequence-based identification in the context of a fungal inventory can easily go wrong. Our first conclusion is that in-depth examination of BLAST results is too time consuming to be considered as a routine approach for future inventories: we spent two months on verification of approx. 20 identifications. Apart from the fact that poor taxon coverage in public depositories remains the principal impediment for successful species identification, it can be deplored that even very recent fungal sequence deposits in GenBank involve an uncomfortably high number of misidentifications or errors with associated metadata. While checking the original publications associated with top score sequences for the few examples that were here reexamined , a positive consequence is that we uncovered over 80 type sequences that were not annotated as types in GenBank. Advantages and pitfalls of sequence-based identification are discussed, particularly in the light of undertaking fungal inventories. Recommendations are made to avoid or reduce some of the major problems with sequence-based identification. Nevertheless, the prospects for a more reliable sequence-based identification of fungi remain quite dim, unless authors are ready to check and update the metadata associated with previously deposited sequences in their publications.

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