James C. Lendemer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Curator in the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden. Lichens, which include a fungal component, are his primary research interest.
Cladonia appalachensis (credit: James Lendemer)
Lichens, like other fungi, are poorly represented in conservation efforts in the United States and Canada as well as most other countries outside of Europe. At the beginning of 2015, only two lichens were protected under the US Endangered Species Act, 16 were protected under similar legislation in Canada, and two were listed internationally on the Red List of threatened species, which is maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). At the state level, slightly higher numbers of lichens and other fungi are protected, although coverage is highly variable and no state has a comprehensive assessment of all the lichens within its borders.
The lack of protections for lichens is not, however, due to a lack of knowledge about the threats species face and the declines they have already suffered. Instead, there is a tremendous wealth of information stored in museums and in decades of firsthand knowledge held in the minds of American and Canadian lichenologists.
Naveed Davoodian is a Ph.D. candidate in the Commodore Matthew Perry Graduate Studies Program at The New York Botanical Garden and the City University of New York. His research is focused on the diversity, evolution, and conservation of fungi.
Sarcodon fuscoindicus, one of several fungal species that have been managed under a federal conservation plan for northwestern forests (Photo: Noah Siegel)
Despite the many benefits that fungi provide, conservation policies and actions have incorporated these critically important species in very limited ways. On a global scale, fungi lag significantly behind plants and animals in conservation efforts. The situation is, unfortunately, no different in the United States.
To illustrate this point, I examined and evaluated U.S. federal conservation policies that directly list fungal species. This analysis, which focused on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the Survey and Manage Standards and Guidelines of the Northwest Forest Plan, was published earlier this year in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. While both of these frameworks have contributed positively to biodiversity conservation in the U.S., both currently suffer from obstacles hindering protection of fungi and other overlooked organisms.
Jessica L. Allen is a graduate student in the Commodore Matthew Perry Graduate Studies Program, and James C. Lendemer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Curator at the Institute of Systematic Botany, both at The New York Botanical Garden. Lichens, which include a fungal component, are their primary research interest.
Healthy community of diverse lichens growing on a mature Fraser fir that remains alive.
Every day, thousands of fungal species throughout the United States perform essential jobs all around us for free. They are vast networks, above and below ground, that facilitate nutrient transportation, form soil, provide natural fertilizers, and add delightful variety to our diets. If fungi went on strike, everybody would notice.
In the United States approximately 10 percent of fish and mammals are protected by the Endangered Species Act, including such American icons as the bald eagle and the American paddlefish. Yet fungi, which constitute an entire kingdom in the scientific classification of species, are effectively excluded from the dialogue. Of the nearly 40,000 known fungal species in North America, only two are protected by the Endangered Species Act!
Is it because we know so little Are there no threats to fungi? Are fungi immune to the threats posed to plants and animals? As is outlined in a recent issue of Endangered Species Research, the answer to all of these questions is a definite “No.”
Maya Jaffe graduated from Florida International University and has had an internship at the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, where she has worked on a project to digitize macrofungi, the largest types of fungi, including mushrooms.
[Illustration by Geo. E. Morris (1906), property of NYBG]
I sit behind drawn curtains in a dark room, illuminated only by light tents that are used for taking pictures. It’s another day on the job as an intern in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, where I am helping in an effort to digitize the New York Botanical Garden’s macrofungi. As I make my way alphabetically through the Agaricaceae family, I come across a shaggy ink cap specimen, Coprinus comatus, with a beautiful illustration.
Barbara M. Thiers, Ph.D., is the Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium and Vice President for Science Administration at The New York Botanical Garden. In honor of Black History Month, she reveals a little-known aspect of botanist-inventor George Washington Carver’s work and his connection with the Botanical Garden.
George Washington Carver (1910)
George Washington Carver may be best remembered for his domestication and promotion of the peanut, but the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium contains evidence of another of his contributions—documenting fungal diseases of plants, which, among other things, is an important cause of crop loss on farms.
Carver was born to slave parents on a farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, around 1864. Although his boyhood was full of struggle against poverty, racism, and illness, his powerful intellect and insatiable curiosity helped him to persevere with his studies. He entered Simpson College in Iowa and then transferred to Iowa State University, becoming the first African-American student to be enrolled there.
After graduation, Carver was appointed assistant botanist at the Iowa State University Experiment Station. His research program in crop diseases brought him to the attention of Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1896, Washington became head of the agricultural and dairy department at Tuskegee, where he remained for the rest of his long career. He died in 1943.
Shannon Asencio, who works at The New York Botanical Garden’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, is the Project Coordinator for the Macrofungi Collection Consortium. This Garden-led project, involving institutions across the country, will result in a publicly accessible database and digitized images of several hundred thousand specimens of mushrooms and related fungi.
The beautiful gills of a specimen collected during the NAMA Foray in the Ozarks.
A couple of months ago, I attended the 2013 “foray” of the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), held at Shepherd of the Ozarks in northern Arkansas. I was there not only to participate in the search for mushrooms—mycology is the study of mushrooms and other fungi—but also to deliver a presentation on The New York Botanical Garden’s exciting new crowdsourcing initiative.
These annual forays are a way to record the mycological species that occur throughout North America. The collection data, photographs, and dried specimens are housed at the herbarium of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. These specimen records provide data about the distribution of macrofungi—mushrooms and other large fungi species—in North America and serve as a resource for additional studies, such as DNA research.
Roy Halling, Ph.D., is Curator of Mycology in The New York Botanical Garden‘s Institute of Systematic Botany. Among his primary research interests is the bolete (or porcini) family of mushrooms, especially those found in Southeast Asia and Australia.
Thirty years ago, I published a book, based on my Ph.D. thesis, describing collybioid mushrooms as they occur in the northeastern United States. These mushrooms, which have no real culinary value, are ecologically important because they decompose leaves and other plant litter in natural habitats. One of the common species in the northeast is called Gymnopus subnudus.
While exploring for bolete mushrooms (porcini family) on the Atherton Tableland in Queensland, Australia, I’ve often encountered over the last 20 years this unnamed collybioid mushroom with bluish green pigments. Even the cells at the edge of the gills are filled with the pigment.
Ellen Diane Bloch is the collections manager of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium‘s Cryptogamic Herbarium, which includes the fungi collection.
Many people know John Cage (1912-1992) as one of the foremost experimental composers and musicians of the 20th century, but he was also a dedicated amateur in the field of mycology, the study of mushrooms and other fungi. When he was asked to teach a music course at the New School in New York City in the late 1950s, he said yes, but only if he could also teach a class in mushroom identification. He taught the class for three years.
A letter from Cage, now kept in The New York Botanical Garden’s archives in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, shows how committed he and his New School students were to their mycological studies. Dated November 6, 1961, the letter was addressed to Dr. Clark Rogerson, the Garden’s mycologist at the time.
Cage announced that after three years, the people involved in the New School classes wanted to form a society to “continue the field trips in suitable weather but which would add winter study periods with emphasis on the literature and work with microscope (sic). In addition we want to have a series of lectures given by authorities in the field. We would like to diminish the gap between ourselves as amateurs and the professional mycologists, knowing full well that we have much to gain, and hoping that our activities in the field can become more useful to the science itself … We would call ourselves the New York Mycological Society … We would have a Secretary and Treasurer but no other officers. We would not employ parliamentary law. Our wish is that the Society would function without dependence on leadership, focusing its attention directly on fungi.”
