Our History

The vision for Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS) emerged from a Mycological Society of America annual meeting at Yale University on July 14, 2012 that included dozens of mycologists – professional and amateur. The problem in question was that nobody knew what fungi existed, and what their distribution was, across North America. The dream was to create a complete “funga” for North America – a comprehensive list of the continent’s fungi, supplemented by maps, images, voucher specimens, and sequences for every single species.

In 2017, the organization was co-founded as North America Mycoflora Project (NAMP) by Bill Sheehan and Stephen Russell as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) focused on community science. The organization rebranded in 2020 as Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS) and sharpened its focus to mobilizing community scientists to help protect fungi and their habitats. The change of name celebrates the desire to champion the entirely unique Kingdom Fungi and sever their long enduring erroneous grouping with plants.

During the first years, the organization advocated for community science mycology – instead of throwing out specimens at the end of a foray, let’s create online observations, save specimens for DNA sequencing and vouchering, and creating a local funga. We made available free Field Data Slips (beginner and advanced), organized over 200 amateur FUNDIS Local Projects, and issued over 100 DNA sequencing grants. During 2017 FUNDIS received $40,000 of DNA sequencing grant funding from North American Mycological Association, Paul Stamets and Dusty Yao, and the Mycological Society of America. With these funds sequencing grants were issued in 2018-2021 and FUNDIS sequenced over 8,000 specimens from forays throughout the U.S. and Canada.

As FUNDIS succeeded with community science initiatives in 2020 our organizational identity matured into a sporulating fruitbody: our work is ultimately for fungal conservation. The organizational name spotlights what is pivotal to protect fungi: to survey! Further community science initiatives, informed by conservation, were guided by FUNDIS Board Member Sigrid Jakob (Rare Fungi Challenges and the Fungal Diversity Database). In 2021, Gabriela D’Elia became the first employed organizational Director.