The role of the amateur in mycology – what would we do without them!

Abstract

The amateur's role in the history of mycology will be traced from its early roots deeply based in the collection of fungi for food to the amateur's present day activities. Attention will be drawn to the most important key amateur figures studying fungi solely or as a wider part of natural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the early part of the present century. How their work influenced the development of mycology will be demonstrated. It is often forgotten that the authorities attached to fungal names, including those we use in mycology on a daily basis, often belong to amateurs. The true professions of these amateurs, the net-work of correspondents they developed, etc. will be revealed and discussed in the context of an overall understanding of fungi as organisms. In addition the formation of mycological societies, and how they have become a focus of amateur activity and a source of accurate and disciplined information valuable to professional scientists will be plotted. The kind of work undertaken by amateurs I refer to will be demonstrated by documenting the activities of the British Mycological Society which celebrated its centenary in 1996. The continuing work of this band of workers and their counterparts throughout the world in the closing years of the millennium will be described. It is argued that they are nationally important and necessary resources, despite many governments or their advisers, especially the most influential ones, being under the delusion that systematics is not cutting edge science. It is also emphasized that amateurs will have an even more important role to play in the future as custodians of knowledge -until hopefully opinions change.

Macrofungal conservation in Canada and target species for assessment: a starting point

“…Driven by passion and enthusiasm, members of mycological organizations have long made crucial contributions to advancing knowledge of fungi (Watling 1998;Perry 2008;Lemelin and Fine 2013). Mushroom club members and amateur mycologists have greatly improved our collective knowledge of fungal diversity and occurrence through many activities and projects.…”

Facebook groups as citizen science tools for plant species monitoring

“…Our results pointed out that supervised groups within social networks can be used as citizen science tools and efficiently collect large amounts of biodiversity data validated by local experts. Usually, the administrators of such groups are passionate volunteers with excellent knowledge of a given territory and its habitats and species (Van der Heul, 2017;Watling, 1998) and are considered by the users as charismatic members to follow (Chamberlain, 2018). They animate the debate, validate and identify the posted species almost in real time and correct misidentifications, thus contributing to the dissemination of taxonomic knowledge.…”

Communication and ‘Forestructures’ at the Geological Intersection of Caves and Subsurface Water Flow: Hermeneutics and Parochialism

“…Such difficulties start with the fact that cave and karst science has traditionally depended on amateurs and explorers to locate sites and acquire much of the basic data. 1 Other branches of natural science face this dilemma, such as ornithology (Mayfield 1979), entomology (Brunelle 1997), and mycology (Watling 1998), where amateur naturalists collect significant amounts of information on species diversity and population, as well as astronomy, where amateur stargazers detect and provide a wealth of information on comets and asteroids (e.g. Orchiston 1999).…”