中国大型真菌分类学公民科学计划1.0

Citizen Science Initiative in Taxonomy of Macrofungi in China 1.0

公民科学是指公众在职业科学家的引导下参与从事科学研究。大型真菌是在生活史中能够形成肉眼明显可见子实体的一类真菌的统称,具有重要的经济价值和生态功能,需要在分类学研究认识其物种多样性的基础上加以开发利用。大型真菌与公众生活息息相关,因此公众有认识这些大型真菌种类的意愿。另一方面,大型真菌物种多样性极高,仅依靠为数不多的职业分类学家难以在短期内全面认知我国大型真菌多样性并加以利用。此外,大型真菌子实体在简单预处理后便可被带到实验室进行分类学研究。综上,我们提议启动大型真菌分类学公民科学计划1.0。在该计划的框架下,公众主要负责大型真菌子实体的生境信息记录、拍照、采集、预处理和寄送。大型真菌子实体将被永久保藏于中国科学院微生物研究所菌物标本馆,并进行形态学检查和DNA分子测序。该公民科学计划预期将提升公众的科学素养,促进大型真菌分类学的发展,为该计划2.0版本的实施提供基础。

Citizen science is a scientific research performed by the public with professional scientists’ guidance. Macrofungi are a group of fungi producing distinct fruiting bodies visible to the naked eye in a moment of life history. The important economic value and ecological function of macrofungi can be developed and utilized based on taxonomical knowledge and understanding of species diversity. Macrofungi are closely related to the public livings, and thus the public wishes to identify the species of macrofungi. On the other hand, Chinese macrofungi with an extremely huge species diversity are impossible to be comprehensively recognized, let alone to be utilized only by the efforts of a few professional taxonomists in a short time. Besides, after a simple pretreatment, the fruiting bodies of macrofungi can be brought to laboratories for taxonomic studies. Given the above, we propose to launch Citizen Science Initiative in Taxonomy of Macrofungi in China 1.0. In the frame of this initiative, the public is mainly responsible for providing environmental niche information, field photos, samples, pretreatment and mailing of fruiting bodies of macrofungi. The fruiting bodies of macrofungi will be forever preserved in the fungarium of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and be morphologically examined and molecular sequenced. This initiative is expected to promote public’s scientific knowledge, improve the development of taxonomy of macrofungi and provide a basis for the Initiative 2.0.