Conservation genomics for “Funga”?

Only recently, “funga” has been added to fauna and flora in the IUCN. The first fungi are getting federal protection in many countries. The Chile bolete, also knowns as Loyo, was probably one of the first to get protection. It is a cousin to the Boletus and looks (and tastes) similar.

One difficulty with the Fungi protection, is that we don’t know to what extent the metrics we use to assess population health are applicable or even meaningful for these organisms.

Conservation genomics measures, such as genetic diversity, inbreeding levels, and effective population size can be hard to interpret for fungi.

This is why we will try to conduct one of the first conservation genomics ‘survey’ of loyo, see what genomics can tell us about this endangered fungi, and assess the relevance of classical metrics for fungi conservation.