[Taxacom] Ten years of the Observatory Hill survey

[Robin Leech]

Adolph and Oluna, 
Impressive indeed.  Top marks. 
Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Adolf Ceska
Sent: November-27-14 2:19 PM
To: 'Taxacom List'
Subject: [Taxacom] Ten years of the Observatory Hill survey

 

Today is the 10-th anniversary of the day when my wife Oluna Ceska started her macrofungi survey on Observatory Hill (Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia). After 10 years and close to 400 visits of "The Hill", Oluna recorded close to 1,300 (1,298 to be exact) species from an area of about 75 ha (approx. 180 acres?).  A part of those collections (earlier collections of Cortinarius, Inocybe, Russula and some other collections) have been DNA sequenced (several hundred of specimens) and posted in GenBank and some were studied and published.  Observatory Hill collections of several species have been directly cited (or referred to by their GenBank
numbers) in the original descriptions of some of the following species:
http://mushroomobserver.org/species_list/show_species_list/708
Majority of the Observatory Hill collections were donated to the UBC herbarium where the collections have been already accessioned or are waiting for being accessioned. Many of those collections have been already included in the UBC Fungi Herbarium database http://www.beatymuseum.ubc.ca/herbarium/index.html
and  mirrored in the Consortium of the Pacific Northwest Herbaria http://www.pnwherbaria.org/ "Virtual herbarium" has been created in Mushroom Observer. It contains photos, microphotos, and drawings of about one third of all our Observatory Hill specimens:
http://mushroomobserver.org/species_list/show_species_list/227
Partial results of the survey have been summarized in annual reports that have been deposited in the GOERT web site:
http://www.goert.ca/activities/2013/05/macrofungi-observatory-hill/
This project was partially supported by the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, GOERT (Garry Oak Ecosystem Restoration Team), and private donors. Cataloguing of the collections has been supported by the Canadian Wildlife Service. 
Our special thanks go to Dr. Paul Feldman, HIA astronomer, who initiated this project and provided all the help we needed.

Adolf & Oluna Ceska, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

aceska at telus.net

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Celebrating 27 years of Taxacom in 2014.