Fungabase :: SESP

Fungabase is a website for tracking mushroom collections and arriving at community species and genus definitions based on collection descriptions.

Fungabase is centered around the idea of indiviual and group survey projects. When you create an account, you get an individual project. After that you are free to create group projects.

Your personal individual project is where you may keep your life list of mushroom collections. If you are collecting in a specific area, and would like to keep those collections separate from your general collections, then feel free to create another project.

Project administrators can add and remove members from a project. Project workers can add and edit project collections.

To see only the data from a specific project, click the Select a Project link in the upper right corner. You are now in "Project Mode". To return to viewing the data from all Fungabase projects, Click the View all data link.

How do I join a group project?
If you would like to join a group project, you need to email one of the project administrators and ask them to add you to the project. You may find the list of administrators on the project's main page, found by browsing the list at the Projects menu.

You do not need an account to view information in Fungabase. All of the information in Fungabase is open to the public. An account allows you to contribute to Fungabase by entering and editing information and uploading photos.

You can add a collection to any project of which you are a member. After logging in, click on the Collections tab to see the current collections. If you the Add a collection link, you will see a form for providing information about the collection.

Provide as much information as you can about the collection, including a thorough description of the collection, if possible. A unique Collection Number for your specimen will be generated based on the project you have selected, the principle collector's nickname the date, and the specimen.

To upload photos, first create a zipfile of the photos that you'd like to upload. Then click the Photo Upload button on the upper right of the Collections or Species tab. After you upload your photos, you can associate them with specific collections from the collections pages.

After logging in, you can edit the photos associated with any collections belonging to projects of which you are a member.

To associate photos with a specific collection, click the link to the collection from the list of collections on the Collections tab. Once you are looking at a specific collection, click the Edit collection photos link. The currently associated photos are shown at the top of the page. At the bottom of the page, you can change the photos associated with the collection.

After logging in, click on the Species tab to see the current species list. After that, you can click the Add a species link. This will take you to a form for providing information about the species.

Species descriptions in Fungabase are based solely on the information from collections in Fungabase. When editing the description of a new or existing species, please include information only from the collections of that species. While you may include useful references to other literature, please do not copy information from books or other websites.

If you have an unknown species (either you can't identify it, or you believe it to be novel), feel free to create a new species entry for it. You should call it "Genus sp. ", e.g. "Russula sp. SLB #3", where SLB is a project name. This will allow you to group your collections together. If you end up identifying your collections to an existing species, then you may change the species that they are associated with.

To associate photos with a specific species, log in, then find the species on the list of species on the Species tab. Once you are looking at a specific species, click the Edit species photos link. The currently associated photos are shown at the top of the page. At the bottom of the page, you can change the photos associated with the speces. You can also select a "best photo" that will be shown on the species list.

Anybody with a Fungabase account can add or edit a species. The idea is that the definition of a species will evolve over time as more collections of the species are made and more people add to the description. Though it is not currently exposed through the user interface, the entire edit history of species (and every editable object) is stored in the database.

In order to learn more about Fungabase.org, please join our email list, or browse the archives. To subscribe to the email list, send a blank email to fungabase-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

You may also subscribe or browse the archive here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fungabase/