Surveying Macrofungi of Yosemite
& Pt Reyes
Mochella sp nova
Conocybe sp nova
Tuber sp
Mycena pura
Agrocybe pediades

What is a macrofungus?
• Answer: a fungus that produces a
macroscopically fruiting structure that can be
seen (and sometimes identified) without a
microscope.

Macrofungi can be very macro
Boletus
edulis
Kabir Peay

Or they can be just a few millimeters
Dasyscyphus nudipes
var. minor

Who is involved?
• Members of the amateur mushroom groups:
Bay Area Mycological Society, Mycological
Society of San Francisco, Sonoma Mycological
Association, Santa Cruz Fungus Federation
• Members of the general public
• Professional mycologist, especially students
and postdocs, from Berkeley, Davis, SF State,
Humboldt State

David Arora, Norm Andresen, Fred Stevens, Mike Wood,Erin Blanchard , Christian
Schwarz, Debbie Viess, David Rust, and many others not pictured

Some of the “Amateurs” are amazing
Cortinarius (>1000 described species)
Dimitar Bojantchev

Galerina – an example of an LBM (little brown
mushroom) genus
Doug Smith

Mike Wood – the author of Mykoweb

The Berkeley crew: Jennifer Kerekes, Anthony Amend, Kabir Peay,
Nicole Hynson, Sir David Read, Nhu Nguyen, Todd Osmundsen Else Vellinga

Why do we want to survey the
macrofungi of the National Parks?
• Surprising little is known about the mycoflora
of North America
• The park contains some of the best and most
easily accessible examples of native plant
communities
• Fungi are crucial components of all terrestrial
ecosystems
• Provides ground truth for ITS sequence data!

Example of the Pt Reyes Survey
http://www.mykoweb.com/PtReyes/
• The survey was structured into five public
“mycoblitzs”
• People from the MSSF, FFSC, BAMS, and SOMA
provided most of the manpower for collecting and
identifying.
• Collections were sequenced (ITS and sometimes
RPB2)

We assigned people routes and zones to cover

Collection instructions were passed out:

Identification of the collections
• Collections were made and coarsely sorted on the Saturday of
each foray, and then examined more closely, photographed
and dried on the following Sunday.
• Collection tags from common species were saved and
catalogued to provide distribution data
• Species that were new to the park list, or for which no
permanent collections were previous made were saved.
• Sunday a smaller group at Berkeley sorted through the the
latter collections, examined some with microscopes, selected
those worth saving, and photographed and dried them.

Curation of collections
• Collection data were entered in a database
• Collections were accessioned into the UC
Herbarium
• Data and images were be made web
accessible
• Eventual goal is to sequence the ITS region
from all of them, and RPB1 from all collections

Inocybe central
Peter Kennedy Kabir Peay

DNA sequences helped to sort out the difficult groups

Increase in number of recorded species
with each mycoblitz at Pt. Reyes
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Inverse Ranked Abundance Curve of Pt. Reyes fungal species
by number of collections

A different plan for Yosemite
• Fewer people (but many specialists)
• No “mycoblitzes”, but lots of small group
collecting
• Voucher specimens with similar labeling and
photographic conventions as at Pt. Reyes
• DNA sequences still a must
• Better internet coordination

The Mushroom Observer
Nathan Wilsons cool tool
• Google “Mushroom Observer”
• Plug in “Yosemite” in the find widow

In 8 month we when from 39 pages to 63 pages of
15 collections/page

Google Doc: the non-public coordination interface

A small piece of the collections
spreadsheet on Google Docs

Some numbers from the first year’s survey
• >500 collections were made, 110 have been
sequenced in one direction for the ITS region
• The collections included >130 species, and 111
genera
• 90% of the species and 62% of the genera were new
records for the Yosemite
• This more than doubled the number of species
known from the park and increases the known
genera by 88%
• When compared to Pt Reyes 62% of the species and
47% of genera were unique to the park
• Several new species have been described

Time consuming issues
• Keeping up with curation of specimens
• Keeping up with the website
• Keeping up with sequence acquisition and
dissemination
• Dealing with permits (especially from
Yosemite!)

My Dream:
• Expand this effort to survey the continent
with a goal of producing an North American
mycoflora
• Use this is a platform for training both
professions (grad students and postdocs), and
the general public
• Find major funding for this