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CBC

This researcher wants your help mapping Atlantic Canada's mushrooms

This researcher is fascinated with fungi and he's enlisting the public to find out more about what he calls an understudied life form. Alfredo Justo, who is currently the curator of botany and mycology at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, is leading a mission to document every mushroom species in Atlantic Canada. Justo knows it's a lofty goal — that's why he isn't doing it alone. The MycoMap Atlantic Canada Network is open to anyone living in or visiting Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. "The basic steps are quite easy if you are out there, looking for mushrooms," Justo told CBC Radio's The St. John's Morning Show. According to Justo, becoming a "community scientist" is as simple as taking a photo of a mushroom and uploading it along with a description to the project's website and spreadsheet. He will also personally accept any dried specimens found in Newfoundland and Labrador or New Brunswick and then attempt to map its DNA before housing them in the New Brunswick Museum. Mushrooms found in other provinces would be handled by other scientists involved in the project, he says. There are at least 3,000 different species of mushrooms in Atlantic Canada, Justo says, but less than 25 per cent of them have been documented. "We have a good knowledge about plants and big animals like birds or mammals, but mushrooms are very difficult to study," said Justo. "They are very tricky." Tracking DNA would help scientists figure out the exact number and types of species found in certain provinces, and where they thrive. Justo says this province's boreal forest and unique climate makes it home to mushrooms that are not typically found anywhere else. However, he says it's difficult to pinpoint the rarity of a species because of how little information is available right now. He's looking forward to seeing the discoveries people make with the MycoMap project. "It has been, for me, a scavenger hunt that has been going on for over 25 years now," said Justo.