Australia has up to 250,000 species of fungus — many of which are found nowhere else in the world — but only a fraction of them have been named and described. A growing group of enthusiastic citizen scientists is working to change that.
"I went down that rabbit hole, and just never came back out," the documentary filmmaker says.She's part of a large group of non-scientists who are photographing, understanding, and identifying a kingdom of life that in their opinion, has been neglected by scientific institutions.
And while some species of fungus are deadly for plants and animals, there's another type which almost every plant can't live without — plant partners.Trees and fungi have been friends for millions of years, but there's still a lot we don't know about their fascinating partnership.These mycorrihizal fungi live alongside root systems to provide indigestible nutrients to the plant in exchange for energy. Up to 90 per cent of plants have associations with fungi in their root systems.
"The knowledge of their ecosystems and the connections to those ecosystems was multigenerational," she says.Her friends casually pointed to a fungus, and told her a story about it being used by their ancestors to transport fire from camp to camp.While many countries in Europe have a culture of foraging or understanding the mushrooms in their local areas, Australia has reused manyOnly recently have scientific institutions started to investigate First Nations' knowledge of fungi.
"A lot of the work in terms of understanding fungal flora has focused on those species that cause humans problems."plant pathogens — but he now researches microfungi.
Mushroom Fungi Inaturalist Fungimap
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