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Mapping mycological ignorance - checklists and diversity patterns of fungi known for West Africa.

ABSTRACT: Scientific information about biodiversity distribution is indispensable for nature conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. For several groups of animals and plants, such data are available, but for fungi, especially in tropical regions like West Africa, they are mostly missing. Here, information for West African countries about species diversity of fungi and fungus-like organisms (other organisms traditionally studied by mycologists) is compiled from literature and analysed in its historical context for the first time. More than 16,000 records of fungi representing 4843 species and infraspecific taxa were found in 860 publications relating to West Africa. Records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) database (2395 species), and that of the former International Mycological Institute fungal reference collection (IMI) (2526 species) were also considered. The compilation based on literature is more comprehensive than the GBIF and IMI data, although they include 914 and 679 species names, respectively, which are not present in the checklist based on literature. According to data available in literature, knowledge on fungal richness ranges from 19 species (Guinea Bissau) to 1595 (Sierra Leone). In estimating existing species diversity, richness estimators and the Hawksworth 6:1 fungus to plant species ratio were used. Based on the Hawksworth ratio, known fungal diversity in West Africa represents 11.4% of the expected diversity. For six West African countries, however, known fungal species diversity is less than 2%. Incomplete knowledge of fungal diversity is also evident by species accumulation curves not reaching saturation, by 45.3% of the fungal species in the checklist being cited only once for West Africa, and by 66.5% of the fungal species in the checklist reported only for a single country. The documentation of different systematic groups of fungi is very heterogeneous because historically investigations have been sporadic. Recent opportunistic sampling activities in Benin showed that it is not difficult to find specimens representing new country records. Investigation of fungi in West Africa started just over two centuries ago and it is still in an early pioneer phase. To promote proper exploration, the present checklist is provided as a tool to facilitate fungal identification in this region and to aid conceptualisation and justification of future research projects. Documentation of fungal diversity is urgently needed because natural habitats are being lost on a large scale through altered land use and climate change.

SUBMITTER: Piepenbring M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7341642 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mapping mycological ignorance - checklists and diversity patterns of fungi known for West Africa.

Piepenbring Meike M Maciá-Vicente Jose G JG Codjia Jean Evans I JEI Glatthorn Carola C Kirk Paul P Meswaet Yalemwork Y Minter David D Olou Boris Armel BA Reschke Kai K Schmidt Marco M Yorou Nourou Soulemane NS

IMA fungus 20200707

Scientific information about biodiversity distribution is indispensable for nature conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. For several groups of animals and plants, such data are available, but for fungi, especially in tropical regions like West Africa, they are mostly missing. Here, information for West African countries about species diversity of fungi and fungus-like organisms (other organisms traditionally studied by mycologists) is compiled from literature and analysed ...[more]

PMID: 32699745

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Project description:BackgroundScientific discovery progresses by exploring new and uncharted territory. More specifically, it advances by a process of transforming unknown unknowns first into known unknowns, and then into knowns. Over the last few decades, researchers have developed many knowledge bases to capture and connect the knowns, which has enabled topic exploration and contextualization of experimental results. But recognizing the unknowns is also critical for finding the most pertinent questions and their answers. Prior work on known unknowns has sought to understand them, annotate them, and automate their identification. However, no knowledge-bases yet exist to capture these unknowns, and little work has focused on how scientists might use them to trace a given topic or experimental result in search of open questions and new avenues for exploration. We show here that a knowledge base of unknowns can be connected to ontologically grounded biomedical knowledge to accelerate research in the field of prenatal nutrition.ResultsWe present the first ignorance-base, a knowledge-base created by combining classifiers to recognize ignorance statements (statements of missing or incomplete knowledge that imply a goal for knowledge) and biomedical concepts over the prenatal nutrition literature. This knowledge-base places biomedical concepts mentioned in the literature in context with the ignorance statements authors have made about them. Using our system, researchers interested in the topic of vitamin D and prenatal health were able to uncover three new avenues for exploration (immune system, respiratory system, and brain development) by searching for concepts enriched in ignorance statements. These were buried among the many standard enriched concepts. Additionally, we used the ignorance-base to enrich concepts connected to a gene list associated with vitamin D and spontaneous preterm birth and found an emerging topic of study (brain development) in an implied field (neuroscience). The researchers could look to the field of neuroscience for potential answers to the ignorance statements.ConclusionOur goal is to help students, researchers, funders, and publishers better understand the state of our collective scientific ignorance (known unknowns) in order to help accelerate research through the continued illumination of and focus on the known unknowns and their respective goals for scientific knowledge.

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Project description:BackgroundMany fungal species in tropical Africa are useful, with high added value, and play essential roles in the structure and dynamic of ecosystems. However, the diversity, distribution, and uses by local populations of these non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and their respective habitats are still very poorly understood in sub-Saharan Africa in general and more specifically in Côte d'Ivoire. This study aims at (i) inventorying the wild useful mushrooms of Côte d'Ivoire within its major protected areas and their respective surrounding sociolinguistical groups, according to climatic and phytogeographical gradients, and (ii) recording ethnomycological knowledge and considerations of these local people.MethodsField and ethnomycological surveys were conducted in the main and highest protected areas of Côte d'Ivoire (Comoé, Marahoué, and Taï national parks) and a set of their respective surrounding villages, along climatic and phytogeographical gradients. Standardized methods (permanent plots and opportunistic searches) were used for field surveys. In addition, a total 748 respondents belonging to 13 ethnic groups were interviewed at a rate of 300 interviewees during the preliminary investigations and 448 persons during the proper ethnomycological surveys.ResultsSixty-eight useful wild fungal species, belonging to 17 families and 23 genera, were listed and collected. Four categories of usage were reported by the rural people (food, medicinal, belief and recreational), with a dominance of food and medicinal uses. Fifty-six species were reported to be used as food and 16 species as medicinal fungi. These uses varied not only from one sociolinguistical group to another but also from a visited village to another. The high number (41) of the reported useful species was found in the Sudano-Guinean savanna zone while 28 species were collected in the forest zone and 22 species in the forest-savanna mosaic zone. These mushrooms were either saprotrophic or symbiotic (ectomycorrhizal or termitophilic). Auricularia sp3, Psathyrella tuberculata, and Termitomyces spp. were found as the most commonly used mushrooms.ConclusionsThese national scale field and ethnomycological surveys give one of the more complete but non-exhaustive list of useful mushrooms of Côte d'Ivoire. Mushrooms are relatively well known and used by the Ivorian people within the main phytogeographical zone of the country. These people also have an interest in all the functional groups with an important phytogeographical zone-fungal-specific used species. However, protected areas of the visited zones seem to represent the last sanctuaries of these organisms due to high rate of loss of natural habitats.

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Dataset Information

Mapping mycological ignorance - checklists and diversity patterns of fungi known for West Africa.

Publications

Mapping mycological ignorance - checklists and diversity patterns of fungi known for West Africa.

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