Czech scientists launch worldwide mushroom atlas GlobalFungi

Prague, July 13 (CTK) – Scientists from the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV) have completed an atlas of fungi communities on all continents, which contains tens of thousands of samples and on which 30 experts worked for three years, Markéta Růžičková, from the AV, wrote in a press release today.

Using the database, experts as well as laymen can find where in the world various fungi species and families occur, along with further broad information related to fungi.

“The information about specimens or families includes data about the parameters of their respective habitats. In addition, the atlas enables to study the composition of whole communities in concrete localities,” said Petr Baldrian, who heads the Environmental Biology Laboratory.

The atlas offers 20,000 samples and 650 million observations of various fungi species as published in more than 200 studies. The users may add new studies to the database and can also ask questions.

Baldrian said most of the available fungi samples are soil communities and the communities of fungi living in a symbiosis with plants.

An analysis of the fungi occurrence data, together with the data on climate in various localities, may improve the knowledge of how fungi will react to the climate change in future, Baldrian said.

According to AV, the completion of so extensive a database has been possible thanks to the recent progress in the DNA sequencing methods, which enabled the experts to comprehensively describe fungi communities in samples.