Well! It has been a huge couple of weeks in the fungi world, and for reasons that no one would ever want fungi to be in the news. When I first heard that two people had died from suspected mushroom poisoning, I was sitting on the couch after dinner and the first thing I said was “…oh no.” The following morning, I was woken up by a phone call to tell me that a third person had died.

I want to respect people’s wishes for privacy as they grieve, and to that end, I don’t want to fuel the media circus or further speculation. I’ll only say how tragic, heartbreaking, and devastating it is for three people to have died and for another to be critically ill, let alone for an organism that Teresa and I dedicate so much of our lives to shedding light on to be the possible cause.

What it has meant for me is that every conversation I have with a stranger who asks what I do has immediately become very fraught and intense. It has also meant that I’ve gained a lot more experience in the media in a very short space of time – and in my first week back at work following surgery and moving house. There’s been ups, downs, and a lifetime’s supply of adrenaline in seven days!
But for fungi, and for science, it has meant an opportunity to raise awareness about fungi and mycology in Australia. We hope that all the media attention on mushrooms means that more people will be curious to learn about this fascinating kingdom, and lead to more funding for fungi research.

I’ll reshare tips on deathcap identification and foraging risk reduction on the social media platforms over the next few weeks, but for now here’s a few links to Teresa’s and my favourite interviews:

Grace on 3AW with Neil Mitchell https://www.3aw.com.au/fungi-expert-issues-stark-warning-for-those-foraging-mushrooms/
Grace on house of Wellness Radio https://omny.fm/shows/the-house-of-wellness/the-house-of-wellness-full-show-sunday-august-13-2?t=21m30s
Teresa on 3AW with Neil Mitchell https://www.3aw.com.au/ask-neil-anything-why-do-deadly-mushrooms-exist/

Stay safe and be kind out there, Grace

Great news! After a veeeery long time, the research project that started FungiSight is heading to the printers!

The American-based scientific journal, Mycologia, has accepted our manuscript and is in the process of editing and formatting our proofs for publication! This research article, titled "A field-based investigation of simple phenol variation in Australian Agaricus xanthodermus," includes sightings made by Australian citizen scientists to answer the question of why yellow stainers seem to be sometimes poisonous and sometimes not.
I'm sharing the process as it happens over on the FungiSight Instagram and Facebook pages, but I'll keep you posted here too!

While we're thinking about research and publication, how long do YOU think research takes from start to publication? Months? Years? Decades?
I'd love it if you could share your thoughts and/or experiences with me via one of these two surveys? I'll create some infographics to share the results! It should only take 3-5 minutes to complete.

SURVEY FOR SCIENTISTS:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2S52W96

SURVEY FOR NON-SCIENTISTS:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2FG36QW

You may have seen the Facebook post yesterday, but we had some news. I finally resubmitted the Agaricus xanthodermus toxicity variation manuscript to the scientific journal, Mycologia!
I should be used to it now but submitting a manuscript can be an incredibly nerve wracking process!

My friend, Kia, says that you should go home after submitting to a journal because it’s exhausting and because nothing you can do for the rest of the day will contribute as much to your career as clicking that submit button! 😛

Those of you who’ve been with us for a while may recall that we’ve sent this paper out to journals before. Unfortunately this project was a bit niche and very confusing (even for me), but this constant refinement process has done wonders! I’m really confident now that we’re telling the best story we possibly can!
This is the third time submitting to Mycologia. The first time they rejected it, provided feedback and encouraged us to try again. The second time, they rejected it, gave us pages and pages of really constructive feedback and invited us to resubmit by May 5th. Which might just mean that if we’ve answered all the reviewer comments and made all the right changes... they just might publish it!! 😮

I’ll be heading out to Tas for fieldwork but keep those Agaricus sightings coming! It’s absolutely Agaricus season and all your sightings help!!

🍄Grace

Welcome to FungiSight on iNaturalist!

Thanks to Tony at iNaturalist's help team, we've resolved the issue with our species list and are ready to go! You can now add observations of any species of our target genera (see our project list) to the FungiSight project.

My name is Grace, I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. I study Agaricus- and I am particularly keen to find out what species of Agaricus we have here in Australia and across the ditch in good old NZ. We have a lot of undescribed native species and for my PhD, I'm hoping to identify as many of them as I can, name some and work out how our Australasian Agaricus fit in with the rest of the world's.

I started FungiSight on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/fungisight) when I was doing my Master's degree - back before iNaturalist was available to us in Australia. I needed to collect fresh fungi for my research but it's so hard to know when and where they were fruiting. I needed eyes on the ground telling me when and where they were popping up so I could go collect them. And you all rose to the challenge magnificently! Thanks to you, I was able to collect enough fresh Agaricus xanthodermus to do my research- and I'm now in the process of publishing our results on A. xanthodermus toxicity.

Now iNaturalist is here and I would LOVE your Australian Agaricus observations! We've even extended the FungiSight family to include research projects for some fellow mycologists: my supervisor, Teresa (Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia), my Phd "sister" Fran Guard in QLD, and fungal ecologist Sapphire. We're also keeping an eye on the spread of some Amanita species.

I'll keep you posted with our research and I look forward to seeing any observations you can share with us!
Cheers,
Grace

Hi everyone!

Thank you for your patience. We're getting ready to amp up here on iNaturalist ahead of this La Niña field season (and the first field season of my new PhD). Woo! But we're still working out some teething issues with the taxon list. It appears that you can add genus level identifications but not species level identifications... not ideal.

I'll let you know once everything is ready to go. Fingers crossed it's soon! I'm looking forward to seeing all your observations and hopefully using them to inform collections for our research!

Cheers,
Grace

Hi Naturalists,

We are just testing this project at the moment so would appreciate if you wait until we launch it.

This will be site to share fungi sightings with Australasian mycologists* doing research! We need your help as fungi pop up like magic so we need keen eyes on the ground. This page collects sightings in Australasia as they pop up to enable scientific study of: Agaricus; Macrolepiota and Chlorophyllum; Paxillus and Austropaxillus; Lactarius and Multifurca; and specific species Amanita phalloides.