CONSERVATION OF MICROFUNGI a voice for unprotected and vulnerable organisms Capacity building

General view of work planned for this action

Prioritizing Africa, mycologists will be trained through courses, workshops and meetings, and provided with resources to build capacity, supporting the African Mycological Association (AMA) in encouraging the development of an infrastructure for mycology within the continent. Professional development for named project participants and selected others will include workshops on making and editing World Conservation Union (IUCN) compatible conservation assessments of microfungi, preparing national plans for fungal conservation, and on databasing and editorial standards. Suitable individuals may also gain experience of management of SQL-compatible databases and use of HTML and PERL programming languages for web design and displaying database query results.

Informational resources will be strengthened by digitizing and publishing on-line existing African and other literature-based fungal records, and by increasing the range of scientific names, catalogues and rare but key mycological publications available on-line through nomenclators for fungi and their associated organisms and Cyberliber, the digital library for mycology. For a selection of individual countries, websites will be established providing information about their fungi. They will use databases on the Cybertruffle server to provide information about occurrence and geographical distribution of microfungi and associated organisms, with illustrations, maps and links to taxonomic and bibliographic websites, to data underpinning each record and to other resources. This project will strongly endeavour to make information in country websites as accessible as possible to users for whom English is not a first language. Work will begin on a system to permit on-line database corrections and updates by participants.

Donated used equipment will be delivered to suitable beneficiaries for biodiversity work.