Targeted morphological and genomic characterisation of hidden fungal diversity

Global estimates suggest that less than 5% of the true fungal diversity is current described, largely because the majority of the up to 5 million fungal species on earth have no visible fruiting structures and cannot be cultured.

Because the hidden majority of species defy established protocols for species recognition we cannot effectively communicate about the majority of fungal species, many of which are frequently and abundantly detected in environmental samples.Over the last decades, enormous amounts of environmental DNA (eDNA) sequence data have been generated by mycologists and fungal community ecologist, thus data availability is no longer a limitation for exploring species boundaries and potentially delimitating species hypothesis based on eDNA.

However, naming species based on sequence data alone is not yet accepted.

To circumvent this, we aim to develop protocols for targeted single cell microscopy, genomics and culturing from soil samples.Our work will contribute important basic understanding of largely unexplored species diversity in Archaeorhizomycetes, a lineage of globally distributed ubiquitous soil fungi.

The project is also conceptually important and has formative potential for the transition towards modern taxonomy with eDNA as an important source of data for species discovery and recognition, applicable to fungi and other microbial eukaryotes alike.