Fungi Project

Projects

1. Nebraska Fungi Project

This project was kicked off in 2023 by project manager, Nebraska state botanist, and all-around legend: Gerry Steinauer. The goal was to identify the fungal communities in eastern Nebraskan woodlands. Prior to this research, little was known about Nebraska’s fungal diversity. Fieldwork was performed by Chance Brueggemann, Derek Zeller, and Steinauer. In the first year, over 500 specimens were collected and documented on iNaturalist. In 2024, a majority of those were DNA-sequenced by Mycota Labs in collaboration with funding from FunDIS. The results of those sequences were used to create the beginnings of a free, online field guide which launched as NebraskaMushrooms.org in 2024 authored by Mitch Pigsley and Zeller.

Also in 2024, we teamed up with John Kyndt at the Bellevue University Science Lab for continued sequencing and collaboration. With grant funds awarded by the Nebraska Watchable Wildlife Grant, the Nebraska Mushrooms website was enhanced in 2025 totaling 250+ species profiles and counting. Also in 2025, the Nebraska Game and Parks established long-term signs at the survey sites that provide park visitors with information of known species and a QR code linking to the website. Our hope is that these physical and digital resources can increase public education and ecotourism in a state where this information was under-researched.

This project has uncovered species previously unknown to science and has increased the known range of hundreds of other species. New findings are continually posted to iNaturalist (1,500+ as of October 2025) and more curated mushroom profiles are added to the NebraskaMushrooms website every year. As this project will always be a work in progress, we hope that the foundational data that we are collecting can be used as a stepping stone for later generations of mycologists to progress further into this deeply misunderstood field to uncover more discoveries.

Project Links

2. Mycology Software Tools

🎨 Nature Colors

Discover natural color-name associations using the Nature Colors interactive tool. It uses data from conventional naturalist color coding resources. Many of these are now out of print and cost prohibitive to aquire. This tool is in-construction.

🚀 More tools will be released as they are finalized.