Mycopirate Mapping
Mapping the Mushroom World
Mycopirate Mapping is our citizen science project aimed at mapping the world of mushrooms all around us! The app will allow mushroom enthusiasts to snap a photo of their mushroom sightings and tag them with metadata such as coordinates, timestamps, and even local weather data. These entries will help create a map of local fungal varieties - Think of it like Waze, but for mushrooms!
Sample Tagging & Sequencing
Participants will not only be able to tag photos on a map, but will also be able to submit specimens from the wild for MinION sequencing in our lab! Each sample tagged on the map will generate a unique QR code to be submitted with the specimen, so that we are able to link each specimen to its metadata on the map.
Mapping Biodiversity Over Time
We plan to use this data to track the mycological biodiversity of our area over time, so scientists and users alike can visualize changes over many years. We hope to build a comprehensive database of regional mycelial networks using the participatory power of citizen science that no team of researchers could ever achieve on their own!