CITIZEN SCIENTIST

RECORD YOUR OBSERVATIONS - HELP ADVANCE SCIENCE

One of the great things about belonging to a mushroom club is the opportunity to help advance the science of mycology. Professional mycologists and amateur researchers often rely on mushroom club members to search out and collect specimens needed for their research. In order to make these collections useful, good collecting is essential.

​Here are some tips to help make your collections useful:​

• Photograph in the field, using your cell phone with the GPS enabled. GPS coordinates need to be attached to your photos in order to properly document the location of your collection. Multiple photographs capturing all of the distinctive features of your mushroom will be very much appreciated. Don’t forget to get down to “eye level” with the mushroom and photograph the undersides, then a few more photos after the mushroom has been carefully dug up or removed from the substrate. A tripod mount for your cell phone and a camera app with​ a shutter delay is recommended.

• Take field notes: what was the mushroom growing on (dead wood, the ground, the base of a red oak, etc.). The​ more detailed, the better. Conifer or hardwood. Sandy soil or peat moss. What plants and trees are growing close by (very important for mycorrhizal species).

• Dry your collection carefully in a dehydrator with the temperature set at no more than 110F. Dry until nice and crispy, like a cracker. Sorry, your oven will not work because excessive heat will destroy the DNA.

• Post your fungi photos to either  MushroomObserver  or iNaturalist  along with your field notes. Be sure to note that a ​herbarium specimen is available, and be prepared to send that dried specimen and the Mushroom Observation Number or iNaturalist Number to a researcher.

• Additional information, such as higher quality photos when you reach home, spore prints, dimensions of the ​mushroom, written descriptions of the mushroom, etc. are always helpful to include in your observation  post.

DNA ANALYSIS - SCIENCE MOVES TO THE NEXT LEVEL

NJMA is proud to be a participant in the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDis)  (formerly known as the MycoFlora Project). ​​In today's world, having a recorded observation is not proof that the specimen is actually the identified Genus and Species.  Mycologists and taxonomists are using DNA analysis to distinguish North American species from each other and from European species. For more information on this cutting edge work see our special interest section on Taxonomy.

NJMA goal is to have vouchered specimens for all New Jersey mushrooms in our NJMA Herbarium. 

Without DNA, it is just a name!