8-9 April – Mentoring for mastering mycological identification

QMS was successful in the Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor’s Community Sustainability and Environmental Grants Program 2016-2017. Our project (ENV00203) is titled “Mentoring for mastering mycological identification skills and community engagement” has been fully funded.

The project aims to build capacity to address the severe lack of people trained to identify fungi in Brisbane. It will:

• Engage community members in discovering, collecting and identifying fungi in Brisbane. They will develop better understanding of the environment and the interplay between the fauna, flora and fungal kingdoms
• Train the collectors to make quality collections with the required notes to make identification easier. They will learn the many steps required before identification is commenced
• Add to the species list of fungi found in Brisbane
• Build capacity among our members by mentoring collectors through the identification process, finding literature, using microscopes, recognizing the features and use of keys
• Allow the purchase of a marque branded with Queensland Mycological Society logo.

In April forays will be held in Oxley and Riverhills (lack of rain may lead to venue change). Dr Tony Young will guide participants in making good collections and in the afternoon will lead workshops to teach participants how to best record their finds. He will take us through all the things you can do without a microscope. This will include making spore prints, chemical testing needed for identification and give guidance towards identification of the specimens we find.

The participants will continue to work on their collections and other specimens found in Brisbane and then Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher will follow up in Phase 2 with very special sessions of mentoring.

All QMS members are asked to make collections of their Brisbane finds this year to assist this project. Early data analysis indicates we have only identified less than 10% of the possible macro fungal species in Brisbane.

Spaces are very limited so please contact Megan Prance directly at Megan.prance [at] icloud.com.

Lets get mushrooming!