Monitoring fungal biodiversity – towards an integrated approach

SummaryBiodiversity information databases and platforms have seen considerable progress in recent years. They have a high potential in conservation science in general, but may be even more revolutionary in relation to poorly known species groups such as fungi, whose practical conservation work has been jeopardised by scattered and poorly controlled information. We review the tradition of collecting information on species occurrences in mycology and discuss the characteristics of the present fungal biodiversity information databases. With a special focus on population trend monitoring of fruit body producing macrofungi, we emphasise several unrealised opportunities of these databases and point out some relevant future directions for them. As especially important, we see the more effective utilisation of citizen science effort and combining the traditional database information with the one derived with modern molecular methods. Also, we emphasise the importance of information on collection effort, including the use of GPS based tracking data, along with the observations.

► An overview of the current tradition in recording and documenting macrofungi.
► Several proposals to improve the storing and sharing of fungal records.
► A vision of a catch all mycological observation database.