Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be lever-aged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS-based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists.

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Entomology České Budějovice Czech Republic

Center for Macroecology Evolution and Climate Globe Institute University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark

Centre for Forest Research Université du Québec à Montréal Montréal Canada

Centre for Functional Ecology Associate Laboratory TERRA Department of Life Sciences University of Coimbra Coimbra Portugal

Department of Biology Acadia University Wolfville Nova Scotia Canada

Department of Biology Duke University Durham North Carolina USA

Department of Botany and Plant Pathology Purdue University West Lafayette Indiana USA

Department of Botany National Museums of Kenya Nairobi Kenya

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Colorado Boulder Boulder Colorado USA

Department of Environment Land and Infrastructure Engineering Politecnico di Torino Turin Italy

Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Université de Sherbrooke Sherbrooke Québec Canada

Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia České Budějovice Czech Republic

Forest Research Institute Université du Québec en Abitibi Témiscamingue Amos Canada

Fungal Diversity Survey Sebastopol California USA

Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery School of Geography and the Environment University of Oxford Oxford UK

Research Group MIND Funga Departamento de Botânica Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Florianópolis Santa Catarina Brazil

Research Group Mycology Department of Biology Ghent University Ghent Belgium

Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Richmond UK

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Technology Sydney Sydney Australia

School of Natural Sciences College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering Bangor University Bangor Wales UK

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