Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS-based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists.

中文翻译：

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公民科学促进真菌保护的力量


真菌保护在全球范围内势头强劲，但仍然存在许多挑战。为了进一步发展，需要更多关于跨空间和时间的真菌多样性的数据。有关种群规模、趋势和地理范围的基本信息对于准确评估单个物种的灭绝风险也至关重要。然而，由于真菌的巨大多样性、复杂和有问题的分类学以及神秘的性质，获得这些数据对于真菌来说尤其困难。本文探讨了如何利用公民科学 （CS） 项目来推进真菌保护工作。我们展示了过去和正在进行的基于 CS 的项目的一些示例，以记录和监测真菌多样性。这些项目包括作为广泛收集计划一部分的项目，为参与者提供有针对性的采样方法的项目，以及参与者收集环境样本以获得真菌的项目。我们还研究了此类项目如何捕捉真菌多样性、估计物种缺失、扩大参与、改进数据管理并将结果数据转化为可操作的保护措施的挑战和解决方案。最后，我们呼吁专业真菌学家与业余爱好者和当地社区接触，提出一个框架来确定给定项目是否可能从公民科学家的参与中受益。