‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’ – but fungi are out of sight

Abstract

Governments, nature conservation and civil society organizations worldwide are doing commendable service in protecting species and their habitats. However, they focus more on charismatic species such as tigers, elephants and whales. Microorganisms, especially the fungi, are not given the due attention despite their ecological importance. Because of their unique lifestyle and relatively less investigations on them, serious exploration efforts on fungi are bound to reveal many new species housing novel genes which could aid in managing current global crises including antibiotic resistance, fuel crisis and negative effects of climate change on crops. This is urgent since loss of habitats, invasion by exotic species, pollution, and anthropogenic changes cause extinction of fungal species as well. Apart from emphasizing these points, this article alludes to a rapid and less expensive method of collecting fungi using a crowdsourcing model and the importance of including information about traits to the cultures deposited in the culture collection centers.