To aficionados, fungi are freaky, mystical and overlooked. They’re helping scientists learn more
ANGWIN, Calif. (AP) — Jessica Allen crunched through fallen leaves among Manzanita trees hunting for something few have spotted before: the Manzanita butter clump — a rare and little-known yellow mushroom found, so far, only along North America’s Western coastlines.
It was last seen here in California’s Napa County two years ago, and Allen, a fungi scientist, was keen to find it. But within minutes, something caught her attention. She knelt, pulled a hand lens to her eye, and peered nose-close into a rock: lichens — a type of fungi — bursting with dazzling shapes, textures and colors.
“It’s so easy to get distracted, but there’s so many lichen!” she said excitedly.
“That was a good rock,” said ecologist Jesse Miller, president of the California Lichen Society.
“Ok, let’s go find some mushrooms,” she exclaimed.
Allen and Miller are enchanted by what they describe as the wondrous and mystical world of fungi, and they’re part of a growing community of people working to protect them. Nearly all life-forms depend on the estimated 2.5 million fungi species on Earth, and they contribute an estimated $54 trillion to the global economy as food, medicine and more, according to a study published in Springer Nature. Despite their essential role, they’ve been largely neglected by conservation efforts even as they face increasing threats from pollution, habitat loss and climate change. That’s been changing in the last decade thanks in part to citizen scientists and a greater understanding of fungi diversity.
“It’s a pretty exciting time in fungal conservation,” said Allen, mycologist for NatureServe, a hub for biodiversity data throughout North America. In that role, Allen is helping accelerate and support fungal conservation in the U.S. and Canada.
Amateur researchers play a key role in conservation
Fungi are neither plants nor animals. They’re an enormous kingdom of life-forms that include yeasts (essential for breads, cheeses and alcohol), molds (the fuzzy stuff on forgotten fruit), lichens (a symbiosis of fungus and algae or cyanobacteria) and mushrooms (which range from edible to psychedelic to deadly ). They’re among the planet’s great connectors and decomposers. Forests need them, and many animals rely on them for food and nesting.
People have derived medicines like penicillin from fungi. Some are used as building material or can store planet-warming carbon. But scientists have only documented about 155,000 species, 6% of the millions they believe are out there.
Conservation starts with knowing what species exist, where they are, how they’re doing and their threats, which requires boots on the ground. This allows conservationists to assess imperiled species and where to put resources.
That’s where groups like the California Lichen Society come in.
“They tend to be the people that often make the most important discoveries, and they’re the ones who are going to be keeping an eye on those rare species over time,” said Allen.
On a chilly recent day, dozens of lichenologists and amateur lichen lovers fanned out across a reserve to get close to rocks and trees. These annual forays are part treasure hunt, part data collection excursion and part nature hike, except its explorers often don’t make it far.
Every powdery, leafy and branchy lichen was an invitation into a miniature world where “Wows!”, “What the hecks!” and “Oh my gods!” abound. As chemist Larry Cool put it: “Lichenologists make terrible hiking partners” because they keep stopping.
Cool’s interest in lichens stretches back 53 years to the day he learned they can be used as natural dyes. “Lichen are more than the sum of its parts and are mysteriously unpredictable,” he said. “I get a lot of pleasure seeing the incredible variety of creation.”
Ken Kellman is also an amateur lichenologist, but you wouldn’t know that from his immense knowledge. A retired air conditioning and heating mechanic, he’s geeked out over them the last 10 years or so, learning on his own and from friends. That obsession has helped scientists discover the biodiversity in his hometown of Santa Cruz, Calif.
“It just keeps your brain in that place where you’re saying ‘Wow!’ all the time. ‘That’s cool!’ And that’s my favorite place for my brain to be,” he said.
Fungi conservation in US ‘is still far behind’ but changing
Gregory Mueller has spent much of his career in fungi conservation. As co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s fungal conservation committee, he coordinates all fungal protection activity across their global network.
According to the group’s Red List of Threatened Species, 411 of 1,300 evaluated fungi across the world are at risk of extinction. Parts of Europe and elsewhere have focused on fungal conservation for decades, but the U.S. “is still far behind,” Mueller said. Only two fungi species — both lichen — are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, while some states like California have legal protections, while others like New Jersey have added them to conservation plans.
That’s slowly changing, in part because of increasing community science initiatives in the U.S. and abroad.
“There’s a lot of amateur mycologists … documenting (fungi) with photographs, putting their images on iNaturalist and our Mushroom Observer, and we’ve been able to use those data to better document fungal diversity,” he said. We’re “starting to get some idea of what species might be in trouble.”
Scientists are still learning about fungi and threats to them
Most fungi are out of sight, spending most of their lives hidden as a vast, threadlike network called mycelium and producing mushrooms — called the fruiting body — only when conditions are just right.
That’s a big reason we know so little about them, said Nora Dunkirk, a botanist and mycologist at Portland State University’s Institute for Natural Resources working to document vulnerable plant and fungi species to help with conservation efforts.
Among their biggest threats includes climate change. Shifts in rainfall patterns, hotter temperatures and worsening wildfires can wipe them out or disturb the delicate relationships between forests and good fungi. Prolonged periods of flooding can starve them of the oxygen they need. Logging, development, invasive insects and pollution also threaten species.
Then there’s overharvesting. The grapefruit-sized and long-lived quinine conk, for example, has been listed as an endangered mushroom species in Europe since the 1980s in part because people have picked too many for their medicinal properties.
“This is an organism that grows on larches all across Europe, and so people see this as a valuable resource and they use it,” said Dunkirk. “But this species specifically has been harvested to its detriment.”
Perhaps the U.S.’s most well-known conservation story indirectly involving fungi happened in the 1990s. The Northern spotted owl was in danger, and officials realized that to save them, they had to manage the entire old-growth forest ecosystems they depended on — including fungi.
With the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, the federal government established rules to protect about 400 rare and little-known species across three states.
Back in California, Allen and her fellow fungi-loving friends continued their quest for the elusive Manzanita butter clump. They searched up steep slopes and down by a creek, looking closely by their feet.
They never found it.
But that’s how it goes when you’re searching for something as ephemeral and unpredictable as mushrooms.
“How many of my days have ended this way? So many,” said Allen. “It was still a great day.”
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