Gyroporus cyanescens mushroom showing vivid blue staining

ALABAMA FUNGAL DIVERSITY PROJECT

Documenting Alabama’s fungi, one collection at a time.

Finding a mushroom is temporary. Documenting it well can turn that encounter into a record that remains useful to naturalists, researchers, and future generations.

FIND → DOCUMENT → PRESERVE

There is still a lot we don't know.

Alabama's forests are full of fungal diversity, but seeing a mushroom is not the same as creating a scientific record of it.

Fungi are seasonal, short-lived, and often difficult to identify from photographs alone. Many species remain poorly documented, and even common fungi may have distribution patterns that are only partly understood.

The Alabama Fungal Diversity Project—AFDP—helps turn observations made by AMS members and collaborators into better records of the fungi occurring across the state.

That may mean careful photography, recording habitat, making a physical collection, preserving a voucher specimen, comparing morphology, or sequencing DNA from selected specimens.

WHY DOCUMENT FUNGI?

A mushroom can tell us more than its name.

A well-documented collection adds a place, a date, an ecology, and a physical organism to our knowledge of Alabama's fungal diversity.

What grows here?

Records help establish which fungi actually occur in Alabama rather than relying entirely on broad range descriptions or records from other states.

Where does it grow?

Repeated observations reveal associations with particular habitats, regions, host trees, soils, substrates, and landscapes.

When does it fruit?

Dates accumulate into phenology—the seasonal timing of fungal fruiting—and can reveal patterns that a single collection cannot.

What did we actually find?

Voucher specimens allow an identification to be revisited later when taxonomy changes, new species are described, or better tools become available.

Alabama Mushroom Society members documenting fungal collections

THE COLLECTION TABLE

The work starts after the mushroom is found.

A pile of mushrooms becomes useful when someone stops, looks carefully, and records what makes each collection distinct.

Fresh specimens can reveal characters that are difficult or impossible to recover later: color changes, bruising, odor, latex, texture, moisture, attachment to substrate, and the appearance of delicate structures.

Documentation also connects the specimen to information that cannot be stored in a dried mushroom—where it was found, what it was growing on, nearby trees, habitat, date, collector, photographs, and field notes.

FROM FOREST TO RECORD

What makes a collection useful?

Photograph it where it grows.

Show the mushroom in habitat before disturbing it. Include the surrounding substrate and growth habit, then photograph the cap, underside, stem, base, and other useful characters.

Record the context.

Location, date, habitat, host trees, substrate, growth pattern, and field observations may matter as much as the photograph itself.

Collect a representative specimen.

Preserve the whole mushroom when possible, especially structures at the stem base. A useful collection may include specimens at more than one stage of development.

Document fresh characters.

Record staining, color, odor, texture, latex, pore or gill features, measurements, and other characters that may change as the specimen dries.

Dry & label the specimen.

Proper drying stabilizes the physical collection. A specimen without its collection information, however, loses much of its scientific value—so labels and records stay connected to the fungus.

Identify, compare & investigate.

Some collections are straightforward. Others require microscopy, literature searches, comparisons with related species, consultation with specialists, or DNA sequencing.

Documented fungal specimens arranged with collection labels

VOUCHER SPECIMENS

A name can change. The specimen remains.

A voucher is a preserved physical specimen tied to collection information. It provides evidence that an organism was actually present at a particular place and time.

That matters because fungal taxonomy changes constantly. A collection identified one way today may be reexamined years later and recognized as something more specific—or something entirely different.

When important collections are deposited in an herbarium, researchers can return to the specimen rather than being limited to an old photograph or someone else's conclusion.

Explore the AMS herbarium

NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE PRESERVED

Good citizen science is selective.

Thousands of observations can be valuable without becoming thousands of dried specimens.

A clear photograph and good field data may be enough for many common or easily recognized fungi. Voucher collections become especially valuable when a specimen is unusual, poorly documented, difficult to identify, potentially outside its known range, useful for sequencing, or important for a specific research question.

The objective is not to collect everything. It is to recognize when preserving a specimen will add something that an observation alone cannot.

ALABAMA GETS WEIRD

Diversity is more than caps and stems.

The fungi encountered across Alabama include striking colors, unusual structures, bizarre ecologies, and organisms that look very little like the stereotypical mushroom.

BLUING BOLETE

Gyroporus cyanescens

Damage the pale flesh and vivid blue chemistry becomes visible within seconds.

PARASITIC FUNGI

Cordyceps & allies

Some fungi make their living from insects and other arthropods rather than trees or soil.

TREE PARTNERS

Suillus spraguei

Many fungi are tightly connected to particular plants through mycorrhizal relationships.

LOOK CLOSER

The small things count too.

Some of the most interesting fungal diversity is easy to walk past when attention is focused only on large or edible mushrooms.

DNA SEQUENCING

Sometimes morphology gets us only part of the way.

For selected collections, DNA sequencing gives us another line of evidence.

Closely related fungi can look remarkably similar. In other cases, mushrooms that were historically treated as one widespread species may contain several genetically distinct lineages.

Sequencing does not replace field notes, photographs, morphology, or voucher specimens. It becomes most useful when all of those pieces remain connected.

Test an identification Compare genetic evidence with a morphology-based identification.

Expose hidden diversity Distinguish lineages that may look nearly identical in the field.

Connect records Compare Alabama collections with documented fungi from other regions.

PROJECT HISTORY

A small sequencing grant became something much larger.

These are dated milestones from the development of the Alabama Fungal Diversity Project. They document what AMS had accomplished at those points in time rather than representing current totals.

2021

THE PROJECT BEGINS

Fifty sequences changed the direction of the society.

AMS received a Fungal Diversity Survey sequencing grant that covered DNA sequencing for 50 fungal collections. The project connected AMS with the John D. Freeman Herbarium at Auburn University, where the physical specimens could be archived.

When the results came back, AMS reported that nearly half of those first 50 specimens represented fungi that were either undescribed or had not previously been sequenced.

2021

UNDER-DOCUMENTED ≠ RARE

One spider fungus demonstrated why field documentation matters.

AMS specifically searched Alabama for the spider-infecting fungus Purpureocillium atypicola. At the beginning of the effort, the legacy project page identified only one Alabama iNaturalist observation.

By December 2021, AMS reported that its collectors had documented 72 specimens in Alabama—an early demonstration that a fungus can appear rare simply because few people have been looking for and documenting it.

2022

BUILDING A VOUCHER COLLECTION

Hundreds of Alabama fungi entered academic collections.

By the end of 2022, AMS reported that collectors had documented, collected, dried, and sent 382 fungal specimens to the John D. Freeman Herbarium at Auburn University.

That year, Collection Committee Chair Alisha Millican was appointed Assistant Curator of Fungi at the University of West Alabama Herbarium, and AMS began transitioning the majority of new collections there.

2023

SEQUENCING AT SCALE

More than a thousand specimens were submitted for sequencing.

A second FunDiS sequencing grant, working through Mycota Lab, substantially expanded the scale at which AMS could sequence documented collections.

During 2023, AMS reported sending 1,003 specimens for sequencing, including collections made during the Alabama Mushroom Faire.

2024

A GROWING RESEARCH COLLECTION

More than 900 specimens had been accessioned at UWA.

By August 2024, the legacy AFDP record reported that more than 900 AMS collections had been accessioned at the University of West Alabama Herbarium.

These vouchered collections preserve physical evidence that can be reexamined as identifications, taxonomy, and research questions change.

RESEARCH

BEYOND ALABAMA

Alabama specimens began moving directly into research projects.

As the collection program matured, AMS began acting as a field partner for researchers who needed particular fungi. The society documented, screened, preserved, and batched material for direct shipment to collaborators.

At the time the legacy AFDP page was written, AMS reported having supplied specimens to researchers in five countries and eight U.S. states.

See current and historical target collections →

Why keep dated numbers?

Collection and sequencing totals continue to change. These milestones are retained as a historical record of the project's development rather than presented as a live dashboard.

MANY RECORDS → A BIGGER PICTURE

One pin is an observation. Thousands become a map.

Individual records begin to reveal where fungi occur, when they fruit, and where our knowledge is still thin.

EXPLORE Alabama fungal distribution maps

See documented observations across the state and explore patterns in where fungi have been recorded.

View maps → PRESERVE Herbarium collections

Learn how physical specimens preserve evidence that can be revisited long after the fruiting body is gone.

Explore the herbarium →

YOU DON'T NEED A LAB

Most useful records begin with someone paying attention.

Take better photographs.

Photograph the habitat, entire fruiting body, underside, stem, base, and important characters rather than taking one attractive overhead picture.

Record what you see.

Date, location, substrate, host trees, bruising, odor, growth pattern, and other field observations can become valuable later.

Bring us the strange ones.

An unfamiliar, unusually colored, oddly structured, or apparently uncommon specimen may be much more scientifically interesting than another basket of familiar mushrooms.

Learn alongside us.

Helping sort collections, photograph specimens, make labels, enter observations, and identify fungi is itself a way to become a better mushroom identifier.

Alabama Mushroom Society members searching for fungi

CITIZEN SCIENCE

The science begins in the woods.

Professional researchers cannot be everywhere at once. A statewide network of people walking forests, photographing fungi, returning to familiar locations, and recognizing unusual specimens can generate a remarkable amount of useful information.

You do not need to know the final species name before making a valuable observation. Good documentation can allow someone else to help solve that part later.

Join a foray

THE NEXT RECORD

It may be growing behind your house.

Look closely. Photograph what you find. Ask questions. And when something unusual appears, document it well.

Find a foray Explore fungal records