Monitoring and mapping Fungal Diversity for nature conservation

Diversitet av sopp kan undersøkes på ulike måter. Den klassiske metoden er å undersøke hvilke fruktlegemer som forekommer i et område. Fruktlegemer er, imidlertid, kun en liten del av soppenes livssyklus. Mesteparten av tiden lever de bortgjemt i jorda eller substratet. En annen innfallsvinkel er å identifisere soppene ved hjelp av DNA-sekvensanalyse, en metode som har økt i popularitet de siste 10-20 årene. Sjelden har de to ulike metodene blitt kombinert og sammenliknet. Det ønsker vi imidlertid å gjøre i dette prosjektet, som omhandler hvordan vi kan kartlegge og overvåke biomangfold av sopp på tvers av Europa, for å bedre bevare mangfoldet av sopp. Prosjektet består av seks ulike deler, som på ulike måter understøtter dette målet.

Despite obvious synergetic potentials, exploration of fungal biodiversity by citizen science and eDNA have been developing in parallel tracks, with some national scale projects being exceptions. Our overarching objective in FunDive is to bring the two approaches together, by evaluating strengths and weaknesses of either, and by exploring the complementary potentials. A critical limitation in that respect is that citizen science and eDNA rely on different species concepts. While citizen science traditionally rely on a Morphological Species Concept (MSC), eDNA based approaches rely on sequence-based Species Hypotheses (SH). In many cases, neither of these are unambiguously linked to biologically well defined species with a scientific binomial, hindering comparisons of species lists across datasets. This lack of consistency is not limited to poorly explored groups of microfungi, but is also prominent in conservation-relevant macrofungi, including for instance waxcaps, widely used to assess conservation value of improved grasslands. Hence, an important additional objective in FunDive is to provide a much improved platform for consistent naming of fungal taxa. The project is divided into six interlinked Work Packages (WPs), of which two are supportive missions aiming to provide improved knowledge, infrastructure and tools for monitoring fungal biodiversity. Three directly challenge important research questions with the aim to provide novel insight into fungal biodiversity patterns, their drivers and, more practically, to the design of sensible monitoring programmes. The last WP is dedicated to project coordination, communication and outreach to stakeholders. Overall, the five scientific WPs cover all three themes of the current Biodiversa call.