Major
Environmental Science
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Elevated temperatures and high moisture in tropical ecosystems lead to rapid nutrient cycling and turnover. Therefore, decomposers serve vital roles in biodiversity protection within tropical climates. This quick turnover makes identification of fungi extremely difficult since existing fungi identification lists are not exhaustive and new species are likely appearing annually, causing a lack of fungi knowledge. Citizen science plays a critical role in combating this deficit by increasing the sightings and photographs of fungi in tropical ecosystems. With more amateur data, scientists will have more resources and incentives to genotypically sequence tropical fungi to determine rates of speciation and evolution.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Fr. Stephen Mitten, S.J., School of Environmental Sustainability
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Fungi of Madre De Dios
Elevated temperatures and high moisture in tropical ecosystems lead to rapid nutrient cycling and turnover. Therefore, decomposers serve vital roles in biodiversity protection within tropical climates. This quick turnover makes identification of fungi extremely difficult since existing fungi identification lists are not exhaustive and new species are likely appearing annually, causing a lack of fungi knowledge. Citizen science plays a critical role in combating this deficit by increasing the sightings and photographs of fungi in tropical ecosystems. With more amateur data, scientists will have more resources and incentives to genotypically sequence tropical fungi to determine rates of speciation and evolution.