\n<\/p>\n
Graveyards, sheep farms and garden lawns are among the hundreds of new sites for rare pink and purple fungi discovered by citizen scientists.<\/p>\n
The charity Plantlife has enlisted 850 volunteers to look for waxcaps in their local areas, so scientists can get data from places such as private gardens to which they have not previously had access.<\/p>\n
They found 300 new locations of the candy-coloured pink waxcap (Porpolomopsis calyptriformis)<\/em>, which is <\/em>classed as \u201cvulnerable\u201d on the global International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN red list of threatened species, and 18 new locations of the vibrant violet coral, Clavaria zollingeri.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLast year was our biggest year ever for the citizen science surveys,\u201d said Dr Aileen Baird, senior fungi conservation officer at Plantlife. \u201cPeople\u2019s interest in fungi is definitely growing, and we wouldn\u2019t have found these new locations without them.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the survey, just over 1,000 pink waxcap and 183 violet coral sites were recorded in the British Mycological Society\u2019s database, so the new findings have significantly expanded the data.<\/p>\n Baird added that there was a \u201crelatively high number\u201d of these fungi in the UK despite them being internationally rare, as they thrive in a type of nutrient-poor ancient grassland that is found in Britain.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are internationally vulnerable which puts them in the same category as snow leopards and giant pandas in terms of their extinction risk. So we have a international responsibility in the UK to protect these fungi,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She added that they were \u201cvery beautiful\u201d and an indicator of these increasingly rare ancient grasslands. \u201cThey\u2019re a habitat that we\u2019re losing massive amounts of and so these fungi can also be a really good way of us finding out where these remnants of ancient grasslands are.\u201d<\/p>\n This habitat has been lost to development and farming, as well as tree-planting, as the fungi need grassland rather than woodland habitats. \u201cThere can be a bit of a clash there, because obviously, tree planting on the whole is a positive thing, but it needs to be in the right places. And so it\u2019s that change of land use and intensive farming. The fungi don\u2019t like fertiliser and fungicides and other kinds of pesticides and things like ploughing and soil disturbance. All of those can negatively impact these fungi.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The pink waxcap or Porpolomopsis calyptriformis<\/em>.<\/span> Photograph: Christine Whitehead\/Alamy<\/p>\n For beginner citizen scientists, the waxcaps are a good species to start with as they are easy to identify. \u201cIf you\u2019re in a grassy habitat, then these are quite distinctive,\u201d said Baird. \u201cThey\u2019re generally quite brightly coloured. So we have bright red, pink, orange, yellow, some even kind of green and purple.\u201d<\/p>\n Clare Blencowe, a member of the British Mycological Society\u2019s field mycology and conservation committee, said: \u201cThe discoveries of so many new sites for both pink waxcap and violet coral are really impressive. These fungi are vital indicators of the health of our grasslands and highlight the biodiversity that exists around us in our towns, as well as our countryside. Thanks to the dedication of our volunteer surveyors, we now have a far clearer picture of where these threatened species survive.\u201d<\/p>\n Waxcap Watch is Plantlife\u2019s annual autumn survey aimed at identifying new sites where grassland fungi can be found. This year\u2019s survey runs from 15 September to 31 December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Graveyards, sheep farms and garden lawns are among the hundreds of new sites for rare pink and purple fungi discovered by citizen scientists. The charity Plantlife has enlisted 850 volunteers to look for waxcaps in their local areas, so scientists can get data from places such as private gardens to which they have not previously<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[4150,15451,189,3777,6902,2712,485,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-25586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-citizen","9":"tag-discoveries","10":"tag-finds","11":"tag-fungi","12":"tag-pink","13":"tag-purple","14":"tag-rare","15":"tag-scientists"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}