
Fungus Among Us: A New Way to Keep Track of
ThemBy Hank
Becker February 27, 1998 Land-dwelling fungi are everywhere--from Death Valley to the
Himalayas. Earth is believed to support about 1.5 million fungal species, but
systematically sampling and describing them has proved a tough task for
scientists. Only about 10 percent of the fungi have been described and many
fungi important to agriculture are still relatively unknown. Efforts to gain new knowledge about fungi have been hampered
because methods for finding and inventorying the organisms are varied and
contradictory. Agricultural Research
Service mycologist Amy Rossman and colleagues could help change this.
Rossman recently led a group of mycologists in developing standard techniques
on how to sample and isolate all species of fungi from a large (20 square
miles) land area and its components of living plants, wood, soil, plant litter,
water, rocks, animals and animal products. Explorers seeking unusual and interesting new fungi can benefit
from the guidelines. So can mycologists who are characterizing new fungi, but
also want to protect and preserve the fungi's native ecosystem. The new
techniques are described in a 208- page book, Protocols
for An All Taxa Inventory of Fungi, published by Parkway Publishers,
Inc. Rossman leads ARS' Systematic
Botany and Mycology Laboratory at Beltsville, Md. She is also curator of
the
U.S.
National Fungus Collections, the world's largest compilation of fungi,
which includes about one million specimens. Scientific contact: Amy Y. Rossman,
Systematic Botany and Mycology
Laboratory, 10400 Baltimore Ave., Bldg. 011A, Rm. 304, Beltsville, phone
(301) 504-5364, fax (301)504-5810, [email protected]. Story contacts Systematic Botany and Mycology Laboratory Amy Y Rossman U.S. Department of Agriculture | |