Fungi
Millions of Fungi
Every living thing is crawling with microorganisms — and you need them to survive
Mycologist tales ...
Throughout Tibet, Micronesia, on Borneo, and on São Tomé and Príncipe (tiny islands off the coast of West Africa), Perry has surveyed “hotspots,” or regions with high levels of endemic, endangered plants and wildlife.
According to Conservation International, there are 35 total hotspots in the world that comprise just 2.3 percent of Earth’s landmass, yet these regions hold more than half of species that can’t be found anywhere else.
The annual http://www.esf.edu/species/mission.htm Most Exciting New Discoveries list by the International Institute for Species Exploration...
The International Institute for Species Exploration seeks to increase awareness of the biodiversity crisis and an appreciation for the importance of taxonomy, natural history, and collections in the exploration and conservation of animals, plants, and microbes.
Although about 18,000 species are discovered and named each year, we are losing ground. Species are disappearing at least as rapidly and unless we collect and describe them, evidence that they ever existed and all that we might have learned from them will be gone.
In the Hawaiian archipelago — the most isolated island chain in the world — more than 90 percent of plants are unique to their environment, and nearly 30 percent are threatened and/or endangered according to the state’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
“We’re collecting the baseline data,” Professor Perry says. “We’re surveying the diversity of organisms and determining what’s there. In all these places, we’re saying, ‘No one’s ever been to this place and done a full documentation of the fungal biodiversity that’s here.’ That’s the starting point.”
“With the endophyte project, we’re talking about big evolutionary questions,” Perry explains. “When we look at endophytes that are living in native plants, we want to know: Did they co-evolve with their host plants? Did they go through adaptive radiation (rapid evolutionary diversification of an organism)? Where did they come from?”
Mushrooms today, Mushrooms tomorrow
Microbial Boom
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