MLCO Annual Summary for 2023-2024

This past year the MLCO Working Group has worked on three main tasks

Created a master list of 2,630 species of macrofungi known from extended Lane County, which is now available to view online. The spreadsheet is a living document that will continue to be updated as we find more and learn more. Each listed species is illustrated via a link to an observation on iNaturalist. Observations have been chosen, when possible, to maximize your ability to identify the mushroom. That is, the observation’s photographs clearly show the features for identification. CMS members involved in the list making, in alphabetical order: Dan Morton, Cheshire Mayrsohn, Bruce Newhouse, Bitty Roy. Lead: Bitty Roy.

Continued DNA sequencing of fungi from Lane County. On the Master List, species we have sequenced are shown in yellow. We have sequenced 560 collections and have about 400 more in progress. Almost half the species we have sequenced are likely not described, indicating there is a lot of work left to do in the PNW! These are indicated on the Master list with provisional names showing relationships, for example, Agaricus diminutivus PNW02 is near to, but different from Agaricus diminutivus and there are at least two DNA variants, only one of which, so far, has been found in our area. We work with Danny Miller of the Pacific Northwest Key council to keep track of these unnamed taxa with the provisional name system, so that when they are eventually described, or found to match an old description, we can change the name across the PNW to reflect these discoveries. Photos of the collections we sequence are in iNaturalist and the specimens will be donated to the Fungarium at OSU. CMS members involved in the collecting and sequencing effort, in alphabetical order: Ralph Begley, Haley Burrill, Heather Dawson, Hilary Dawson, Carolyn Delevich, Connor Dooley, Ann Goddard, Ron Hamill, Susie Holmes, Cheshire Mayrsohn, Bruce Newhouse, Ron and Sandy Patton, Marcia Peters, Bitty Roy, Noah Siegel. Lead: Bitty Roy

We are very happy to announce that we now have a Microscopy team (pictures above)! Many fungi cannot properly be identified without microscopy, and the information is required for new species descriptions. The working group has been conducting microscopy workshops at Lane Community College; working their way through the specimens that have been sequenced that proved to be interesting. CMS members involved in the microscopy effort so far, in alphabetical order: Haley Burrill, Scott Clark, Heather Dawson, Ron Hamill, Susie Holmes, Dan Morton, Bitty Roy, Molly Widmer. Lead: Susie Holmes.

A big Thank You to everyone who has contributed their citizen scientist talents to these projects. Bitty apologizes in advance if you were involved in any of this work and did not get mentioned.  She tries to keep track but is human.

The MLCO project on iNaturalist is constantly growing/gathering inputs through everyday people uploading their fungal finds to iNaturalist. Every mushroom uploaded to iNaturalist that is within the MLCO geographical boundaries and meets all of the MLCO requirements is automatically added to the project. Below are the current statistics for the 3 projects maintained by MLCO on iNaturalist. The increase in #s cited in parenthesis, is the change since last years CMS Year in Review was published on August 13, 2023. Note that the number of species stats are totals and not necessarily validated.

Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon (Main project)

Project Description: This project was started to inventory and document the macrofungi of Lane County, Oregon and the surrounding area. It is sanctioned as a part of the Cascade Mycological Society (CMS).

• Total observations: 74,096 (increase of 19,236)
• Total species: 2116 ( increase of 233)
• #people/contributors: 5,582 (increase of 1,237)

Woodchip Fungi of Lane County Oregon (sub-project)

Project Description: The Woodchip Fungi of Lane County project was created in December of 2019. This project documents fungi that are present in wood chip habitats. Primarily geared towards urban landscapes in the Eugene-Springfield area; it includes fungi present in any woodchip (i.e. wood chip or mulch covered landscape areas) habitat within Lane County.

• Total observations: 196 (increase of 20)
• Total species: 65 (increase of 9)
• #people/contributors: 78 (increase of 11)

Vouchered Macrofungi of Lane County Oregon (sub-project)

Project Description: This project is for designated users who voucher fungal specimens for a fungaria (fungal herbaria). A subset of these vouchered specimans are selected for DNA testing.

• Total observations: 437 (increase of 354)
• Total species: 414 (increase of 169)
• #people/contributors: 54 (increase of 28)

Each year MLCO organizes a Mycoblitz to coincide with the Mount Pisgah Mushroom Festival. We seemed to have had a big rebound in observations in 2023. The 2023 Mushroom Show Mycoblitz had a record breaking 3,355 observations, compared to 913 in 2022, 2476 observations in 2021, and 2296 in 2020. The number of unique species was 529, with 424 observers, and 207 citizen scientists stepping up to help as identifiers. A big thank you to August Jackson who contributed the most identifications with 641.