I have created a new project, Entomopathogenic Fungi Collection, that will automatically aggregate entomopathogenic fungi based on a preliminary taxon list developed with the help of @richtehan. The new project is a much better representation of entomopathogenic fungi on iNat. It currently has over 8,000 observations and 126 species, compared to less than 600 observations and 55 species in the traditional Entomopathogenic Fungi project.
This traditional project will live on, however, as a place to manually post entomopathogenic fungi that have not yet been placed in a taxon covered by the collection ...more ↓
I have created a new project, Entomopathogenic Fungi Collection, that will automatically aggregate entomopathogenic fungi based on a preliminary taxon list developed with the help of @richtehan. The new project is a much better representation of entomopathogenic fungi on iNat. It currently has over 8,000 observations and 126 species, compared to less than 600 observations and 55 species in the traditional Entomopathogenic Fungi project.
This traditional project will live on, however, as a place to manually post entomopathogenic fungi that have not yet been placed in a taxon covered by the collection project. Many fungi are easily recognized as arthropod pathogens, but it's usually much harder to identify them to genus or species. This means that the collection project would miss many entomopathogenic fungi observations that are identified simply as fungi or at the level of a higher taxon that includes both entomopathogenic and non-entomopathogenic fungi, e. g., Hypocreales or Cordycipitaceae. To aggregate both identified and unidentified entomopathogenic fungi together in a single project, I have created the Entomopathogenic Fungi Umbrella.
Sorry if this all sounds a bit complicated. I think together the 3 projects will provide much better tools for the exploration of entomopathogenic fungi on iNat. Below are some recommendations on how the changes may affect project members and how the new projects can be used by observers and identifiers.
Obervers
If you want to see links to all 3 projects on your observation of entomopathogenic fungi, please join all 3 projects. Most entomopathogenic fungi that are identified to the level of genus will now get picked up automatically by the Entomopathogenic Fungi Collection project, so there's no need to manually post them. Ascosphaeraceae and Myriangiaceae will get picked up if they are identified to family, and Entomophthorales and Laboulbeniales will get picked up if they are identified to order.
We will gradually remove identified observations from the Entomopathogenic Fungi - Unidentfied project. In the future, please post your observations to this project only if they are not picked up by the collection project.
Identifiers
The Entomopathogenic Fungi Umbrella project will have observations from both the collection and traditionl project. You can use the filters in the Explore or Identify interface to customize your view of the collection. For example, here's an Identify view of all North American entomopathogenic Hypocreales in need of ID.
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Entomopathogenic Fungi - Unidentified
