A-8. OUTLINE OF THE PROJECT
We propose to establish a community-based research network to understand the impact of global climate change on the biodiversity of macrofungi (mushrooms) and fungus-like myxomycetes (slime molds). Using web technology, the proposed network will report high-quality field data on when and where these organisms fruit. Community teams will document observations with digital cameras and, in some cases, collect reference material. We will compare data from parks, schools, and other study sites to test hypotheses about how changes in weather patterns could impact biodiversity. The slime mold research will extend a worldwide inventory. We seek support from Toyota to coordinate the project, refine research protocols for schools and community teams, and give training workshops in the U.S. and Japan.
B-1. GOALS OF THE PROJECT
Understanding and managing the impact of global climate change and other environmental changes on biological systems is a mammoth task. It is impossible to conduct randomized, replicated experiments to study the impact of droughts, heat waves, and other massive perturbations on the abundance and distribution of particular species. Fortunately, because of recent advances in technology and statistics, it is now feasible to collect and integrate information from a large number of study sites, tease out the response of populations to natural events, and gain an understanding of their environmental requirements and interactions.
B-2. CONTENTS OF THE PROJECT
We seek funds for the first phase of a long-term project. Our objectives are to develop research protocols and an efficient, self-sustaining means for training and maintaining community research teams. Our initial goal is to generate data from national parks; ultimately, we plan to expand to study sites elsewhere. In 2009, we propose to field four research teams in the U.S. and one in Japan. These teams will refine and test research protocols for mushrooms and slime molds. Each will work with a host park and be directed by a professional scientist. Teams will include school teachers and students, along with a National Park Service interpreter and other interested individuals. Each will recruit from under-represented minority groups and include multilingual individuals. Thus, they will interact with a wide range of ages and be ethnically and culturally diverse.
The project's concept has been tested successfully in similar projects targeting ants, ladybugs, pollinators, and invasive plants. The U.S. National Science Foundation recently awarded a large educational grant to our ladybug team led by John Losey. Australia's Fungimap project (http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/fungimap_), which involves over 700 volunteers, monitors both mushrooms and slime molds.
Our teams will develop on-line local identification guides that are specific to their region (e. g., for a mushrooms guide see http://mushroom.uark.edu and, for slime molds, http://slimemold.uark.edu). We will test and refine guides so that elementary school children, their parents, and other general park visitors can identify species correctly after a training session that teaches them identification characters and how to use the web. For taxa that are difficult to identify correctly, our research protocols will leave identification to experts. Digital images will be part of each data record and used in quality control. Students will learn through collecting, photography, mapping, and other research activities. Participants will use the web infra-structure on Discover Life, which is constantly refined through user contributions and feedback.
Research teams will select a representative group of "target" species that include members of the various ecological groups, such as ectomycorrhizal species, litter-decomposing species, and wood-decomposing mushrooms. Some team members are already well along in building identification guides and developing a protocol that can be used by volunteers. For example, Stephenson's group has developed http://slimemold.uark.edu, which provides extensive educational materials on slime molds. Once funded, after a planning meeting and three months preparation, we will recruit, give regional training workshops, and field community teams, the first of which should be in place by fall, 2009.
We have identified over 20 National Parks across the U.S. as initial study sites, many of which are already involved in Stephenson's slime mold inventory. In Japan, Hachimantai National Park will be our first study site. Mark DePoy at Buffalo National River, Arkansas, has offered his park as a study site and for hosting our initial meeting of key participants. This meeting will enable us to discuss all aspects of the project, to learn from Tom May, coordinator of Fungimap, and to plan the first training workshops for community volunteers. Our scientists will give the first training workshops; eventually, as the network expands, National Park Service interpreters and experienced volunteers will give them. Workshop participants will gain hands-on experience with Discover Life's identification, database and image management tools, acquire skills needed to work with mushrooms and slime molds, and learn techniques to produce high-quality, diagnostic images of our target organisms.
Some places have surprisingly active amateur mushroom groups. In California's Bay Area, these include the Mycological Society of San Francisco (http://www.mssf.org), the Bay Area Mycological Society Bay Area Mycological Society, the Sonoma County Mycological Association (http://www.bayareamushrooms.org) and the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz (http://www.fungusfed.org). It is not unusual for mushroom forays here to attract over a 100 individuals, giving an idea of the size of our initial target audience. Participants are often highly trained in mushroom identification and excellent photographers. They may run web sites with thousands of images, such as Mike Wood's Mykoweb (http://www.mykoweb.com) and Nathan Wilson's Mushroom Observer (http://mushroomobserver.org). Such sites and others are valuable resources that we hope to incorporate into our project.
B-3. EXPECTED OUTCOME
Following the same basic approach used by Fungimap and using Discover Life's state-of-the-art software to construct identification guides, manage images and data, and produce high-speed maps, community teams should be self-sustaining and each generate thousands of occurrence records each year.
By the end of year-3, we anticipate that at least 500 volunteers will be active and that we will have a network of over 50 study sites. We will have produced a web-interactive identification guide specific for each major geographical region (e.g., western U.S.) containing one or more study sites. Discover Life will serve the database consisting of many thousands of records, most supported by images. We will also have a full set of training and research protocols in multiple languages on-line to aid in expansion of the network around the world. These will enable schools to join the network.
We will have trained numerous National Park Service interpreters and other participants who could serve as leaders in the establishment of additional study sites. Thus, everything required to increase the size of the project by several magnitudes will be in place. By the end of year-3, we will have the baseline of data needed to assess distribution patterns over large areas and examine year-to-year fluctuations for particular species based on regional weather patterns. The galleries of images will capture the morphological variation that exists for particular species. All data will be readily available to both the scientific community and general public through Discover Life.
B-4. COMPOSITION OF THE PROJECT TEAM
-
The Polistes Foundation
Kevin Weick, Executive Director -- http://www.discoverlife.org/who/CV/Weick,_Kevin.html
The Polistes Foundation is the non-profit umbrella of Discover Life and will be the project's fiduciary. Its support includes a 5-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Biological Information Infrastructure and an National Science Foundation grant. The Polistes Foundation and our partners will be able to maintain the proposed network after it is established without further support from Toyota.
-
Discover Life
John Pickering, Univ. of Georgia -- http://www.discoverlife.org/who/Pickering,_John.html
Discover Life will freely provide the project with technology to collect and share information. The sites integrates over 600 partner databases and has information on over a million species. It served information to 240,000 IP addresses in May, 2008, and has had a total of 280 million hits since inception.
-
Mushrooms team leaders
Tom Bruns, Univ. of California, Berkeley -- http://www.discoverlife.org/who/CV/Bruns,_Tom.html
Tom May, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Australia -- http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/fungimap_
Greg Mueller, Field Museum, Chicago -- http://www.discoverlife.org/who/CV/Mueller,_Greg.html
-
Myxomycetes team leaders
Steve Stephenson, Univ. of Arkansas -- http://www.discoverlife.org/who/CV/Stephenson,_Steve.html
Project director of the NSF-funded Global Biodiversity of Eumycetozoans project (http://slimemold.uark.edu)
Yousuke Degawa, Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History, Japan
Jun Matsumoto, Fukui Botanical Garden, Japan
Mitsunori Tamayama, Iwate, Japan