Because of their cryptic nature, the true diversity of microbes can only be well understood with molecular data. It is also true for relatively “big” microbes, i.e., mushrooms, which can produce large fruit bodies. For the majority of their life cycles, however, they are represented by spores or hyphae, which are generally hidden from human eyes. Recent studies on mushroom biodiversity therefore often use next-generation sequencing technique. This approach produces massive amount of sequence data but usually not accompanied by voucher specimens because DNA is extracted directly from soil, roots, water, etc.

Collecting mushroom fruit bodies, on the other hand, is time consuming and is never able to recover the true diversity. However, having fruit bodies is critical to understand taxonomy and ecology of mushrooms. For example, morphology of fruit bodies is essential information to describe new mushroom species, and is directly linked to ecological function. One of the most intriguing aspects of mushroom fruit bodies is that they can serve as individual ecosystems by providing habitat for diverse micro-organisms, such as bacteria and insects. This presentation summarizes the on-going project, i.e., “DNA barcoding from all mushroom species and associated larval diversity found in the Tsukuba Botanical Garden.”