Calling all fungi fans: the New Brunswick Museum needs your help
The New Brunswick Museum is starting a citizen science project to document the varieties of mushrooms in Atlantic Canada.
Alfredo Justo, the museum's curator of botany and mycology, is leading the project and says he needs help.
"This is going to be a big, years-long — if not decades-long — project," Justo told CBC Radio's Information Morning Saint John.
"So we need all the help we can get from people interested in biodiversity and citizen scientists."
Justo said getting involved starts in the field.
"If you see a mushroom that looks interesting, or if you're actively collecting mushrooms, just take some photographs of the mushrooms, keep the mushrooms as if you were foraging. The difference is that you're going to preserve it for scientific study," he said.
Justo said the collected mushrooms need to be dried using a dehydrator or fan at 60 C or below for 12 to 24 hours.
They can be stored in a small plastic bag and then mailed to the museum. A portion of the mushrooms will become a part of the project's collection, while a small bit will be used for DNA sequencing.
Justo said the project is important because there are a lot of unknowns about the mycology of Atlantic Canada.
"Mushrooms are really under studied, especially when we compare what we know about plants or big animals," he said.
Justo said there are an estimated 3,000 species of mushrooms in the region, which is double the estimated number of plant species.
But, there are only 10,000 mushroom samples at the New Brunswick Museum and 40,000 plant samples, "so, you see the disparity there," he said.
"We need to get a lot of collections, just to get to the same baseline data that we have for plants or birds or mammals."
Justo said the project will aim to bring our knowledge of fungi at the same level as other species and will help scientists in the future understand changes in the mushroom landscape in Atlantic Canada.
"We will be able — in the future — to look back and say, 'Oh, this species was at this place 10 years ago. Is the species still there?'"
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