Rocky Mountain National Park is scheduled to host its second annual “mycoblitz” on Friday and Saturday, a collaborative effort with the Colorado Mycological Society to survey the park’s fungi.
Park officials said last year’s survey, held in August, significantly increased the known number of mushrooms that grow in the park. The 90 people who participated collected 280 samples of approximately 200 distinct species.
This year’s survey is designed to sample fungi from habitats throughout the park at a different time of the year to help expand park officials’ understanding of fungal distribution and biodiversity.
Rocky Mountain National Park is typical of most national parks with a good inventory of its animals and flowering plants, but officials have little information about the park’s fungi. The goal of the “fungal foray” is to address this need and produce a useful database for ecologists and park managers while making basic knowledge of the region’s fungi publicly accessible.
Park staff and volunteers will participate in the study with experts from the Colorado Mycological Society. Those participating will be targeting only macrofungi — those that produce macroscopic fruiting structures such as mushrooms.
Identifications of the collections will be done in two steps: 1) sorting
into major groups and identification of the most common and easily
recognized species and 2) more careful scrutiny of the specimens in a lab
where microscopes and reference books will be available.
Park officials said fungi are important components of the park’s environment. They are the primary recyclers of wood and other lignified plant material, as well as the most abundant and important group of plant pathogens. Fungi also form mutualistic interactions with most plants and are crucial components in soil food webs. They also associate with insects in a huge diversity of symbiotic interactions.
Collecting fungi, and other items from the park, is not allowed without a research permit.
