Listen to the podcast:
https://citscipod.podbean.com/e/the-great-north-american-fungiquest/
Thousands of mycophiles took to the forest in October to document as many mushrooms as they could, as part of the first annual Great North American FungiQuest. In this podcast, we spoke with Robert Courteau, project creator and also founder of the non-profit group Think Fungi.
Projects and other links relevant to this podcast are:
The Great North American FungiQuest
Great news story featuring the 2022 FungiQuest:
“The future is fungi”: The power of citizen science to advance fungal conservation
Podcast Transcript:
Citizen Science: Stories of Science We Can Do Together
Season 3, Episode 11: The Great North American FungiQuest
[THEME MUSIC]
Host: Bob Hirshon
Welcome to Citizen Science: Stories of Science We Can Do Together. Brought to you by SciStarter. Today, we look at the tasty, tantalizing and sometimes toxic world of fungi, and the results of the first annual Great North American FungiQuest.
[THEME MUSIC out]
Bob
About 450 million years ago, the first aquatic plants were doing their best to move onto land and create the lush green world that we humans began enjoying about 449 million years later. But they had a big problem: all of those nutrients that used to wash over them when they lived underwater were no longer available; so they had to try to suck all the nutrients they needed out of the ground.
Well, their story, and our story, would have ended right there, except for the heroes of today’s podcast: the fungi! These soil dwelling creatures could poke their hair-thin hyphae, or mycelium, through the soil and absorb all the chemical compounds they needed. But they couldn’t photosynthesize and make their own food, the way plants do.
So they formed a mycorhyzal partnership– literally, fungus/root– sharing their soil nutrients in exchange for sugars produced by plants. Soon, this power couple conquered nearly every body of land on Earth. And isn’t there a lesson there for all of us? Later on, Earth’s thriving plant life allowed the first animals to begin nibbling their way out of the oceans. So you could say with 100% confidence that without fungi, this very podcast would never have existed.
But despite their importance, fungi are so discreet, spending most of their lives underground, or as single-cell yeasts and other invisible forms, that we tend to overlook them unless they are forming unsightly mildew films on our shower grout. Okay, sometimes I still overlook them even then, but I’m working on that! The point is, there are an estimated 2.8 million species of fungi in the world at least, and about 95% of them have yet to be described.
I know what you’re thinking: This sounds like a job for CITIZEN SCIENCE!
And today our guest is Robert Courteau, creator of the non-profit group Think Fungi and also the first annual Great North American FungiQuest! And, yes, I’m pronouncing it “fungee” here, because that’s how Robert pronounces it, although the folks at the Oxford Dictionary say definitively, that it’s pronounced, and I quote: “However you want to say it, buddy! You can say: [FUN-gee], or [FUN-guy] or even [FUN-jai].” Obviously, they were in a good mood that day.
Also with us in the SciStarter Virtual Party Space is Emma Giles, SciStarter Program Coordinator. Emma is at the controls and also joining in as she is so moved.
All right, thanks for thanks for joining us, Robert. So could you tell us a little bit about yourself and and you know, how you got involved in fungi before we get into the actual FungiQuest and learn more about that?
Robert Courteau
Yeah, so I’m a former chef, and started off my career here in Canada in Ottawa and it eventually led me to the Czech Republic–
Bob
Of course, as it will.
Robert
Exactly, people like to travel you know that we like to go to Europe and so I got to see what the the old world has in terms of culinary value. So I was cooking over there and people I knew over there told me to try out their national pastime, which is basically mushroom hunting. So pretty much anywhere you know, pretty much the further east you go in Europe, the more mushroom hunting becomes a thing. So people who are from Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia kind of areas, they definitely know what I’m talking about. So I kind of went out, but I didn’t have field guides and it was really dependent on the neighbor. And the neighbor didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Czech. So it was a little sketchy at the time. So well the neighbor told me there was three mushrooms that were edible. So those are the three that I always keep on going for, and eventually I realized that there was probably more than three edible mushrooms. So I started to learn those. Then I realized I should probably learn the poisonous ones–
Bob
Good idea. You should have started with that, but…
Robert
You’d think, right, you’d think! So yeah, so I started to learn some of the poisonous ones, eventually move back to Canada here, where I just continue to learn. It’s an entirely different ecosystem of mushrooms here, so I had to restart everything and learn from the very beginning. Then from there just kind of fell into actually the science of of fungi and everything that I do. It’s actually an extraordinary little world. It’s super niche. Obviously not many people know much of anything about about fungi. . And, so you kind of fall down a little rabbit hole. Eventually I realized, you know, I’m still of the opinion that fungi could save the world if we just allowed it to.
Bob
Yeah, we’re just in the way.
Robert
Yeah, exactly. Basically. They’ve been here a lot longer than we have. They know what to do.
Bob
It’s interesting how many people, especially with fungi have started as citizen– people who are interested in them, then became more like amateur citizen scientists to fungi and then just kept going. As opposed to a lot of other areas where, you know, you study maybe ornithology or study an “-ology” in college, but a lot of the most prominent fungus experts came to it from, you know, sort of like you did.
Robert
Yeah, it’s funny, because some people will come in through biology, right, they had an interest in biology. And, you know, mycology just kind of stood out to them. And so they entered it through that way. But I’d say the majority come from kind of the foraging aspect, where you know, they, they like gardening, or they like hunting, or they like to do, you know, homesteading, and, and mushrooms are there. They get into the edible first, and then hopefully, with any luck, it goes from just being edible mushrooms to all mushrooms, right? A lot of the ones that are really amazing, aren’t necessarily the ones that you’re gonna be eating.
Bob
Right. And it’s a whole kingdom, right? A lot of people might think of it as a fairly small group of critters, but they have an entire kingdom to themselves and all sorts of diversity.
Robert
Oh, yeah, there’s more species of fungi than there are of all the others combined.
Bob
And now that’s really part of… I just wanted to get into, you know, this FungiQuest. That’s really part of it is to get people out there and identifying these things. Was that part of your impetus for starting this project? This North American FungiQuest?
Robert
Yeah. This year was predominantly oriented towards getting as many observations as possible, and really getting the general public involved. So not just those people who are already doing it. But you know, the person who never really thought about it, or, you know, school kids, or, you know, just the general public. So we didn’t want to make it too confusing. So we have some bigger plans for next year, for example, that we’ll get into in a little bit. But right now, it’s kind of just, let’s get those observations in. The more observations we have, the better, for a variety of different reasons. So that really was kind of one of the key goals.
Bob
Do you hope to make sort of– it reminds me a little bit of the Christmas Bird Count that happens every year. Is this sort of the similar idea?
Robert
Yeah. For example, this the FungiQuest just ended, we had just under, I believe, 10, short, or seven short of 4400 species.
Bob
Wow.
Robert
So yeah, if you put that into context, there’s about 200 species in North America of birds, I think. There’s a good little comparison, right? We had 22 times the amount of total bird species actually documented by FungiQuest. It’s estimated there’s probably around 11,000 species of mushrooms– you kind of have to differentiate from general fungi, because any sort of mold that’s growing on your, on your orange could technically be considered–
Bob
Right, or mildew or athletes’ foot…
Robert
When we’re talking strictly of the fruit bodies, right, you know, we’re estimating, and it’s still an estimate, that there’s only about 11,000 in North America. So we documented nearly half of them.
Bob
Okay. And I should point out here that by fruiting bodies, we mean mushrooms, right, the, they’re the reproductive organs of some fungi that live underground or on trees, they carry spores, which are kinda like the seeds that plants carry in fruit. So yeah, mushrooms are fruiting bodies.
Robert
So I tend to tell people that it’s kind of like the apple of the apple tree. So I mean, this is the reproductive organ, if you will, of the, of the entire fungi. So that, in itself, is obviously where you’re going to be identifying what that is, right? But you have roughly 3 million species of funghi in the world. And you have roughly between somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 to 30,000 species that actually produce fruit bodies. So you know, that’s about 1% of all fungi will create fruit bodies, and the other 99% don’t.
Bob
And before we go too far, I know, I know, some folks could be inspired by this podcast to go out mushroom foraging themselves. And there are some that are toxic, we know and even deadly. So first of all, don’t eat anything unless you’re absolutely sure what it is. That’s really good advice for everything, not just mushrooms. If you don’t know what it is, don’t put it in your mouth. Beyond that, Robert, do you have any suggestions when it comes to avoiding problematic mushrooms?
Robert
White mushrooms with white gills. So when you have the gills on the underside, you know, your regular button mushroom that you’re gonna get the grocery store, if you can think of it in your mind, is a white mushroom. But the gills underneath are black. Right? So those are your basic mushrooms. Now imagine the same thing, but with white gills underneath. And the reason why that’s kind of a caveat is that you have the destroying angel, which is a white mushroom with white gills, and you have the–
Bob
I don’t like the name of that. I just don’t like the sound of that. If that’s on the menu, maybe I’m not gonna–
Robert
Yeah, you don’t want to destroying angel and you don’t want the death cap. And both of those mushrooms have white caps. They’re very prevalent across the continent. And, and they actually are some of the most common mushrooms for mushroom poisonings. And they’re not– you don’t want to consume that. I guarantee you. It’s not like a mild toxic, it’s, you know, deadly toxic.
Bob
Yikes. Okay. So, between now and the next FungiQuest, if you want, if somebody wants to get confident that they can go out and make an identification and contribute meaningfully, and maybe even collect some for their own consumption, what would you recommend people do? Are there clubs, are there groups? You know, how do you get into this?
Robert
Yeah, I mean, so right off the bat, I mean, the world of mycology tends to be pretty regionalised simply because mushrooms tend to be fairly regionalised. So, you know, most states will have their own regional clubs. Okay. So there’s quite a lot of mycology clubs. And I definitely would recommend getting involved with one of them, because they tend to have a good number of experts, they go out in the woods with, you know, their guided tours. And there’s really no replacement for going out. Going out with experienced people to show you those fungi. You know, even people who are just interested in taking photos, right, really enjoy their photography, they like to go out. But people who want to know more about the science or more about foraging for edibles, right? So there’s all different kinds of people who come out to these events. But definitely in the regional clubs, Think Fungi, which is, you know, what I created, Think Fungi was designed as a community. So it’s a free community online where essentially anyone can just join globally. And it’s nothing but a group of mycophiles, right? So it’s open for anyone to host events if they want. Because as I said, we’re so regional. In terms of these clubs, I just thought it’d be a good idea to have kind of a more expansive group, if you will. So. So yeah, so there’s a number of clubs you can join. For sure.
Bob
Great.
Robert
That’d be my first step. Also, field guides. If you’re gonna go out, if you are an introvert and you want to go by yourself, then you get your field guides. You set aside a few hours, essentially, you go into the woods, you find a mushroom, you flip through the field guide, you find the mushroom… And that’s, that’s how I started. But it’s much more preferable to go with people who know what they’re doing and just learn from them. Stand on the shoulders of giants.
Bob
Right. Good idea. Wow. And I know that some fungi are microscopic like yeasts. Right? But isn’t there a fungus that’s the largest single organism on earth? Like, like up in Oregon?
Robert
Yeah, the honey mushroom. So absolutely massive. And it’s also not only the largest, but it’s also considered, it’s right out there with the heaviest organism on Earth. If you were to compile all that mycelium from underground and put it together in one bunch, it’d be one of the heaviest organisms on Earth–
Bob
– like a blue whale, or something.
Robert
–and also the oldest, it’s about 3000 years old, I think it is.
Emma Giles
So just to give us a good look at like what we can look forward to for 2023? Can you give us some information or walk us through what we know so far?
Robert
Yeah, so 2023 is likely to be quite different. So this was our first year, 2022. And, you know, we learned a lot about it. And within the mycology world, there is a small but mighty group of people who did DNA sequencing. And it’s important in the world of mycology to have that DNA sequencing because there’s a lot of mushrooms. There’s a lot of species that are still being discovered, but most importantly, is that we don’t know what species we really have here and that’s the interesting thing. So when we say, you know, that we think that we have around 11,000 fruit bodies, or different fungi that create fruit bodies in North America, it’s an approximate right? We can tell you pretty much guaranteed how many exact species of birds there are, right? But we couldn’t tell you that number of fungi or even, you know, mushroom fruit bodies.
And so what we really need to do is get out there and find all the mushrooms that we possibly can. And so 2022 was really just about that: it was spread the word, get as many people out to make observations, as many observations as possible is the goal. Because eventually, you know, for every 1000 observations you get, one of them’s gonna be a rare species, right? Or maybe it’ll be a new species. But we won’t even know generally, if it’s a new species, unless that DNA sequencing is also occurring, because so many of these mushrooms actually look so similar to others, and the only way of knowing that it’s actually a different mushroom is through DNA sequencing. So that’s something that we’re definitely gonna be working on going forward.
Bob
Great. Something to look forward to. Thanks for joining us.
Emma
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Robert
Thank you for having me, guys. This is fantastic; I loved it.
Bob
You can check out the Great North American FungiQuest at SciStarter. Also, don’t miss the Mushroom Observer project which partnered in the FungiQuest. You might also want to visit Robert Courteau’s Think Fungi website. You’ll find links to all three in the info section of this podcast.
Well, that’s all we’ve got for you this time. For the SciStarter team, I’m Bob Hirshon. Thanks for listening.
[THEME MUSIC]
This podcast is brought to you each month by SciStarter, where you will find 1000s of citizen science projects, events and tools. It’s all at SciStarter.org. That’s S-C-I-S-T-A-R-T-E-R dot O-R-G. SciStarter’s founder is Darlene Cavalier. And thanks so much to you, the listener and citizen scientist, for getting involved and making a difference. If you have any ideas you want to share with us and any things you want to hear on this podcast, get in touch with us at info@SciStarter.org. Once again, our email address is info at starter.org. Thanks again and I’ll see you next time.
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