There are at least 300,000 different mushroom species around the world that don’t have names, and unfortunately, we don’t really know what they look like either. They are called dark fungi and the noticeable trace they leave behind is in DNA in soil samples. Henrik Nilsson is a biologist at the University of Gothenburg and has a article described that a large part of the fungal kingdom consists of dark biodiversity.
– We can assume that many of the mushroom species have important ecological functions, says Henrik Nilsson.
Is facing recistance
The regulations that govern the right of mushrooms to be named assume that they are something that can be picked on a forest walk or that can be grown in a laboratory. Attempts to change the regulations have failed.
– The group that is against giving fungal species DNA-based names thinks that there must be something more than a DNA sequence to name the species with a scientific name, says Hanna Johannesson, mycologist at Stockholm University.
Ahead of the international mushroom congress in the Netherlands next year, Henrik Nilsson has high expectations. He hopes that a debate will start in the area.
– This is our reality. That most things in biological life are things that we cannot see with the naked eye and therefore do not have names, says Hanna Johannesson.