MLCO 2019-2020 Annual Summary
CMS’s Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon project on iNaturalist is an increasingly valuable tool. We started on the 5th of March 2018. As of the 16th of May 2020, we have 6257 observations of 758 species made by 572 people, of whom 212 are members of the project. It is now possible to use our iNat project as a guide to our local fungi! We also know from our iNat records that we have dried specimens of more than 300 of our 758 species to date (more species are being added all the time). Only 40 of the 758 have been sequenced so far, but we are ready to ship another 96 the minute the moratorium on sequencing lifts (it has been in place since October). Of the 40 we have sequenced, five (13%) may be new species (not in Genbank and not in the literature so far), but we need to work more on these to be sure. In addition, we were able to attach names to some mystery Mycena, Russula and Inocybe, and added a new Agaricus to the state, Agaricus porphyrocephalus var. pallidus.
All of the above was done with some assistance from the CMS Taxonomy Interest group. Susie Holmes hosted 3 taxonomy workshops at Lane Community College for the group to help identify and prepare fungi specimens for sequencing.
Another MLCO accomplishment during 2019 was the creation of the Woodchip Fungi of Lane County project on INaturalist in December of 2019. This project will capture the fungi that are present in wood chip habitats. Primarily geared towards urban landscapes in the Eugene-Springfield area; it encompasses fungi present in any woodchip (i.e. wood chip or mulch covered landscape areas) habitat within Lane County.
The MLCO Steering committee members are Dr. Bitty Roy, Susie Holmes, Bruce Newhouse, Roo Vandegrift, and Cheshire Mayrsohn.
