We have decided to expand our commitment to environmental education, and this year we have awarded our first ad hoc research grant to Vanessa McPherson from Macquarie University for her project Fungal Biodiversity: Diversity, Distribution and DNA.

Vanessa will examine club and coral fungi in the Lane Cove Valley and surrounding regions, using DNA barcoding to identify and characterise novel and existing species.

New specimens will be prepared for Herbaria and characterised microscopically to unify morphological and DNA data. Existing Herbarium specimens will be processed for DNA analysis. This project will definitively identify diverse species of clubs and corals, assemble a reference collection of specimens and photographs, generating DNA databases and morphological keys for identification of Australian species. New species, phylogenies of fungal taxa and distribution maps will be published in the scientific literature.