The purpose of this blog post is to encourage internet-savvy
people to contribute to fungal conservation!
As you may know, fungi, invertebrates, microbes and other
life forms are often poorly understood, despite the word ‘biodiversity’
becoming commonplace in the last two decades. This word’s origins come from a
contraction of ‘biological diversity’ (Hawksworth 1996: p. 6). This planet’s
‘biota’ are considered ‘the diversity of all living things’. The bios
part comes from the Greek, meaning ‘life’.
Sadly, biodiversity has commonly been interpreted narrowly
as including only animals and plants. In earlier times life was divided into
Animals and Plants but in recent times many more kingdoms have been recognised,
such as in the six kingdom system that includes: Animalia, Archaea, Bacteria,
Fungi, Plantae and Protista. The three larger (macroscopic) kingdoms are
animals, fungi and plants. I have ordered these in decreasing order of numbers
of species (based on estimates for fungi, as significantly less taxonomic work
has been carried out on this kingdom). This is the same order as if listed
alphabetically. Remember that animals includes the invertebrates, which are the
most species rich group.
It is difficult that so many documents consider life on our
planet to be just animals and plants, often referred to in biodiversity
documents as fauna and flora. This leads to the unfortunate situation where
anything that is not flora or fauna is simply beyond the conceptual grasp of
most people, even those who ought to know better.
It is time our usage of ‘biodiversity’ improved in accuracy
and inclusivity. Where we can we need to update definitions. Wikipedia
is one place this can be done. I also urge you to request or insist on the accurate
use of biodiversity in reports, policy documents, council plans, management
plans, articles etc. A good start would be recognising biodiversity as the
diversity of all living things and even better would be to recognise all
Kingdoms. This might take lobbying over some time but will be worth the effort.
If you are comfortable searching the web you will surely
have come across Wikipedia. This collaborative encyclopedia can be a great tool
if we, the collaborators, put our best efforts into it. If we get the momentum
going on the internet then hopefully dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary, will change their current limited
definition of biodiversity to one that includes all life.
[By the way: unlike some members of partilment I would never
use Wikipedia as a reference for a scientific or professional work, but I am happy
to use it as a source for general and local knowledge.]
David Minter is
currently the President of the International Society for Fungal Conservation and during the recent third congress of the society ran a workshop on how to
become fungal conservation champions, such as by editing wikipedia entries (Image
If you want to know more details about why usage matters,
for fungal conservation in particular, check out ISFC website.
What Wikipedia pages can you edit? If you register, you
should be able to be edit most pages. You may want to protect your privacy by
signing up under a ‘pen name’ or ‘avatar’.
Good places to start updating Wikipedia include country pages
(look under environment or biodiversity subsections), conservation pages, your
favourite ‘patch’ such as local conservation areas or national parks, regional
and local government areas, etc. The list is huge, which is why I suggest we
all become part time editors. Do not forget that Wikipedia is available in many
languages, so you can also update or even create pages in other languages if
you are proficient!
In cases where less accurate authors simply write “fauna and
flora” to mean the species found in a document and you don't want to use biota
or ‘animals, fungi and plants’ you could simply use ‘organism’ (this is
outlined here )
Remember that 72% of Australasian macrofungi are endemic (Mueller & Schmit
2007; Mueller et al.,2007), so they are
ours to conserve. Raising awareness of the needs of fungi for conservation are
important. I hope we can increase the understanding of our region’s wonderful
biodiversity. If you want to know more about Australian Biodiversity you should
read Chapman (2009); his estimates suggest that Australian biodiversity
·‘Microbes’ 28% (Archaea,
Bacteria and Protista).
oVertebrates (birds, fish,
mammals, reptiles etc) less than 2%
Species scape – the larger the
organism the more species! (Yves Basset & Isabelle Bachy). http://www.natuurwetenschappen.be/cb/ants/projects/ibisca-why-arthropods.htm
So sadly to date
most of our efforts in understand biodiversity have likely focused on onlyaround 7% of Australia’s species.
When editing, please don't forget to give a short reason as
to why the text has been changed. Wikipedia protects itself from malicious
robots by checking this. It is also worth keeping track of your edited text as
other editors may want to revert to the status quo. Keeping edits in format
free programs like notepad are best as wiki pages are in html. Remember that
information that is not supported by citation is easily modified or removed. (Below
are some references that you may want to cite for Australian and Australasian
If you would like inspiration you should check out the site
for Wombat State Forest particularly section 4 ‘Fauna, fungi and flora’.
If you can upload pictures into Wikipedia it takes a few
days but well worth it: ‘sexy fungi’ pictures are always appealing!
If you end up wanting to change more than a word or two you
should read up on how to cite in Wikipedia
Happy editing and correcting on behalf of accuracy and
McMullan-Fisher, Chair of Fungimap Conservation and Biodiversity Subcommittee
and Australasian representative on the Council of the International Society for
Chapman, AD. (2009) Numbers of living species in Australia
and the world. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. <http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/pubs/nlsaw-2nd-complete.pdf>
Minter D. (2011) Botanists
and zoologists fungal conservation needs you. http://www.fungal-conservation.org/blogs/message-to-botanists-and-zoologists.pdf.
Mueller GM, Schmit JP. (2007). Fungal
biodiversity: what do we know? What can we predict? Biodiversity and Conservation 16: 1–5.
Mueller, GM, Schmit, JP , Leacock, PR,
Buyck, B, Cifuentes, J, Desjardin, DE, Halling, RE, Hjortstam, K, Iturriaga, T,
Larsson, K-H, Lodge, DJ, May, TW, Minter, D, Rajchenberg, M, Redhead, SA,
Ryvarden, L, Trappe, JM, Watling, R, Wu, Q.(2007) Global diversity and
distribution of macrofungi. Biodiversity and Conservation, 16,