get fungal

hobby mycology, houseplants, and nature stuff in general

[charminggreekdemigod]

[myconetting]

Have you tried one of those home mushroom cultivation kits you find in hardware stores?

well, i bought one for my mom last year from a nearby mushroom seller, but i've never bought one for myself. i prefer the thrill of the hunt. the culinary aspect is secondary to me!

[myconetting]

uhhhhhh

hm. don't like that

[myconetting]

today i learned:

lichen = fungus + {algae, cyanobacteria}

lichens are identified by their fungi, not their algae

lichen taxonomy is... aaaaaaaaa

Formerly, some lichen taxonomists placed lichens in their own division, the Mycophycophyta, but this practice is no longer accepted because the components belong to separate lineages. Neither the ascolichens nor the basidiolichens form monophyletic lineages in their respective fungal phyla, but they do form several major solely or primarily lichen-forming groups within each phylum. (Wikipedia)

please. just be monophyletic for once i swear to god

[myconetting]

babby's first dried specimens ready to be sent to a lab for barcoding 🧬

[myconetting]

bonus specimen that decided to pack itself

[myconetting]

babby's first dried specimens ready to be sent to a lab for barcoding 🧬

[myconetting]

organizing mushrooms... hard

[battle-of-the-taxons]

PHYLA: ROUND ONE

Basidiomycota vs Mucoromycota

Basidiomycota

Mucoromycota

Voting ended onJan 31, 2024

Propaganda under here:

BASIDIOMYCOTA

These are one of the main groups of fungi that everyone knows! They're best identified by their fruiting bodies, on which their microscopic spore-producing structures, basidia, rest on. Basidiomycota makes up 1/3 of all fungi with 32 000 described species, and they're both terrestrial and aquatic! Some fungi in this group can be mutualistic with insects, some contribute to rot and degredation of lignin in wood, and some (P. ostreatus) are carnivourous and eat nematodes! And most importantly, many are edible or have medicinal qualities.

MUCOROMYCOTA

Mucoromycota was one of the groups previously under Zygomycota, but has since been heightened to its own phylum. This phylum includes the group Glomeromycotina, which can also be considered a phylum but for numbers, we have ruled it as a sub-phylum according to our sources. Mucoromycota includes the plant symbionts which form mycorrhizae, benefiting the plant and the fungus. They can also contain bacteria within the fungal cells, which benefits the plant, fungus, and bacteria.

[myconetting]

vote basidiomycota!

if anything besides basidiomycota or ascomycota wins, this tournament is gonna be WEIRD! all of the fungi will be tiny microscopic little guys, which is cool, but you know what's cooler??

fly agaric, babey. that's a basidiomycete through and through. you want fungi? yeah i'll show you a classic fungus!!! 🍄

(photo credit: Onderwijsgek on Wikimedia, CC-BY)

so here's the deal. basidiomycota and ascomycota are the phyla that basically include every fungus more than a couple centimeters tall or wide. they also have the most described species and the most observations by a long shot.

here's a smattering of guys in basidiomycota, to illustrate

please. there's no contest.

[battle-of-the-taxons]

PHYLA: ROUND ONE

Basidiomycota vs Mucoromycota

Basidiomycota

Mucoromycota

Voting ended onJan 31, 2024

Propaganda under here:

BASIDIOMYCOTA

These are one of the main groups of fungi that everyone knows! They're best identified by their fruiting bodies, on which their microscopic spore-producing structures, basidia, rest on. Basidiomycota makes up 1/3 of all fungi with 32 000 described species, and they're both terrestrial and aquatic! Some fungi in this group can be mutualistic with insects, some contribute to rot and degredation of lignin in wood, and some (P. ostreatus) are carnivourous and eat nematodes! And most importantly, many are edible or have medicinal qualities.

MUCOROMYCOTA

Mucoromycota was one of the groups previously under Zygomycota, but has since been heightened to its own phylum. This phylum includes the group Glomeromycotina, which can also be considered a phylum but for numbers, we have ruled it as a sub-phylum according to our sources. Mucoromycota includes the plant symbionts which form mycorrhizae, benefiting the plant and the fungus. They can also contain bacteria within the fungal cells, which benefits the plant, fungus, and bacteria.

[myconetting]

vote basidiomycota!

if anything besides basidiomycota or ascomycota wins, this tournament is gonna be WEIRD! all of the fungi will be tiny microscopic little guys, which is cool, but you know what's cooler??

fly agaric, babey. that's a basidiomycete through and through. you want fungi? yeah i'll show you a classic fungus!!! 🍄

(photo credit: Onderwijsgek on Wikimedia, CC-BY)

so here's the deal. basidiomycota and ascomycota are the phyla that basically include every fungus more than a couple centimeters tall or wide. they also have the most described species and the most observations by a long shot.

here's a smattering of guys in basidiomycota, to illustrate

please. there's no contest.

[mushroomidentifierbot]

Just so everyone is aware:

An international group of qualified mushroom identifiers who do worldwide identification in emergency cases have identified the Shroomers App as a potentially very dangerous system that could kill you if you try to use it to identify edible mushrooms. They use AI to generate almost all of their content, including their identification profiles on their app as well as their books and other materials. Not only is this unethical from a content creation standpoint, it is also extremely dangerous.

DO NOT USE APPS FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES BEYOND SIMPLE CURIOSITY. A MISTAKE WHEN IDENTIFYING AN EDIBLE COULD COST YOU YOUR LIFE. DO NOT EAT ANY FORAGED MUSHROOM YOU CANNOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY SIGHT OR HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED IN PERSON BY SOMEONE WHO CAN.

ONLY BUY BOOKS FROM REPUTABLE SOURCES AND AT THIS POINT THAT MEANS ASKING EXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHAT BOOKS THEY USE.

Mushrooms are fun, amazing organisms. Enjoy safely.

[gridmaster5000-deactivated20241]

learn foraging IRL- even if you're in a major urban area, I can almost guarantee there are people who know and are willing to teach you.

do not EVER eat foraged plants or ESPECIALLY fungi unless you are completely sure. read ecology books, botany books, and mycology books. learn lookalikes.

even if you Do think you know what a mushroom is, do clarifying experiments- look at bruising, the patterns under the cap, literally anything identifying. do the same with plants- how are the leaves arranged, what do the edges look like, where is it growing, etc?

I'm an experienced forager and I still have to double check stuff. do not rely on apps. they can give you an idea of where to start researching what species it is, but do not ever trust them. if it says it's an oyster mushroom, don't assume it is one- use it as a jumping off point to see if it actually is an oyster mushroom (it's probs not), and to learn about species that look like it. do not ever trust an app, AI or not, over the knowledge in books and in the heads of foragers, or your own experience. I've had the Seek app (not AI afaik) tell me shit is edible when it's clearly a Destroying Angel.

[mushroomidentifierbot]

The Seek and iNaturalist app, and I could be wrong, do use a basic identification algorithm, and I'm not sure if it's considered AI or not, but it's more of a sorting algorithm more than anything else, and it's mostly based on human inputs and identifications. I'm not entirely sure the distinction. But as someone who uses iNaturalist regularly as a member of the Fungal Diversity Project, I will say if you're hoping for identification, go with iNaturalist rather than Seek. And never use either for identifying if something is edible or not. The beauty of iNaturalist is you can A) sort through tons of verified observations to help narrow down your own identification by comparison, and B) the iNat community as a whole can help you identify something, at least as far you can identify something through a photograph and basic descriptions. Sometimes it takes a while, but usually people can help you verify within a couple months. Plants and animals tend to be quicker, mushrooms take longer.

Seek is less serious and really an App more designed for hobbyists and casual observers. I would also like to correct you on one thing as someone who has used both apps extensively. The Seek app absolutely didn't tell you something was EDIBLE. It may have misidentified your mushroom as something you knew to be edible, but iNat and Seek don't venture into edibility talk (because as we've seen with other apps, hence my whole post, irresponsible). They do however sometimes link to other sites or resources where edibility may be a detail discussed along with other pertinent information, but they themselves don't have edibility information, and I think that's an extremely important distinction here.

Either way, never rely on an app, or even a single resource for edibility info. Read reputable books, join mushrooming clubs, take classes, etc. And NEVER eat something foraged you cannot personally identify. The one exception to this rule is if it has been identified by an expert or experienced forager.

[myconetting]

iNat uses a combination of vision model and location model, both "AI", and both trained solely on data from iNaturalist observations. As I understand it, the vision model does the visual matching and then those results are weighted by the location model, which has information about whether the species is commonly observed in the area. And yeah, it's extremely important to note that iNat & seek are for citizen science and nature education, respectively—there is absolutely no mention of edibility because that's not what they're for.

Also, you should never assume the members of the iNat community who propose identifications for your observation are doing it to advise you on the edibility of your specimens! I personally would be horrified if someone thought my ID was a thumbs-up for eating something. I don't identify observations when there's any indication the person might try to eat the mushroom because I'm just not experienced enough to be comfortable with that, even though I try to only add IDs where I've done research. If you're going to use iNat, or any other online crowdsourced resource, you need to do your own research and understand that you are responsible for making the decision about whether to eat something.

There are plenty of Facebook groups and mycological associations where people are happy to share their expertise, especially in the form of guided forays and events! They also tend to be more geared towards edibility discussion than iNaturalist, where it's more science focused. But all of them are great resources for learning about mushrooms and enjoying nature :).

[myconetting]

keys to familiarize with

genus helvella

genus boletus

genus suillus

genus hygrocybe

genus psathyrella

genus lactarius

[myconetting]

ah lads not again

[myconetting]

Yet the nomenclatural rules for this group still follow protist conventions instead of classical botanical rules applied to other fungi. May this legacy remind us of the taxonomic rollercoaster they have gone through.

Naranjo-Ortiz, M.A. and Gabaldón, T. (2019), Fungal evolution: diversity, taxonomy and phylogeny of the Fungi. Biol Rev, 94: 2101-2137. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12550

[myconetting]

Taxonomy of the Entolomataceae is undergoing revision, based on molecular studies.

[myconetting]

ok i'm probably gonna start a tag lmao

taxonomy hell

because fungal taxonomy is kind of a disaster

[myconetting]

tfw like a third of the mushrooms i wanna identify are in here

[myconetting]

dw tho i'm gonna assimilate the shit out of this information. at the very least get a decent handle of which families are cohesive enough to talk about in broad terms

[myconetting]

tfw like a third of the mushrooms i wanna identify are in here