Checklist of Pacif island Basidiomycetes - Landcare Research

The list resulting from scanning the literature was supplemented with data on collections in the region
mobilised by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Globally GBIF currently mobilises 293
million records from 12,700 datasets. Extracting data for the Pacific presented some difficulty, especially
for those Pacific islands governed by non-Pacific based countries (e.g. Hawaii), where it is not easy to
build an appropriate query. However, it is clear from Table 1 that much more data is available in the
literature than is currently mobilised by GBIF data providers. This result probably reflects the current
priorities for digitising collection data in the major European/US herbaria, where much of the Pacific
material resides. In fact a substantial proportion of the GBIF data results from the collections held at
PDD/Landcare Research (Table 2), where all collections are digitised and made available through GBIF.
Casual inspection of the list suggests the usual historical problem of workers applying European names
outside their region of reasonable application, for example Auricularia auricular-judae and Macrolepiota
procera are unlikely members of the Pacific mycota. Interestingly there is some evidence to suggest
such anomalous records are associated with the pathology literature rather than the taxonomic
literature. The list contains many names which can be traced back to some of the great ‘Voyages of
Discovery’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_and_American_voyages_of_scientific_exploration).
Notably Berkley’s enumeration of the fungi collected on Nare’s Challenger Expedition 1872-1876 (Ref
13), Belcher’s HMS Sulphur Expedition 1836-1842 (Ref 12), Wilke’s Expdition, USS Vincennes 1853-
1856 (Ref 14), and Gaudichod’s enumeration of fungi from Freycinet’s ‘Voyage Autour du Monde’,
1817–1820: L'Uranie and La Physicienne. The polypore mycota of the Islands is the most extensively
documented, especially as a consequence of the early expeditions and other collections made in the
19 th and early 20 th centuries, perhaps reflecting the survival of these forms in the humid tropics and their
subsequent transporation back to Europe. Many of the names, especially for these early polypore
collections, are long forgotten and modern interpration is difficult if not impossible. That being said,
many names could be resolved down to reflect many fewer potential taxa. Resolution would require both
nomenclatural and taxonomic investigation, neither of which have been applied in the purely mechanical
(digital) manufacture of this list. That work is necessary to create a useful and robust synonymic
checklist of Pacific Island basidiomycetes. This list is a relatively small contribution to that longer term
goal.
The list enumerates the occurrence of 2,771 names applied to Pacific Island ‘basidiomycete’ taxa. By
comparison in New Zealand we have currently enumerated 4,551 names (corresponding to 3,049 taxa).
Despite the manifold shortcoming of this list it is clear that much work remains to be done to capture the
known and unknown information on Pacific Island fungal biodiversity.
Table 1. Numbers of taxa indexed per island/territory
PICT Total Number Names From
GBIF
American Samoa 45 15
Bonin Islands 224
Caroline Islands 2
Chiloe 16
Cook Islands 67 20
Easter Island 5
Federated States of Micronesia 247 36
Fiji Islands 290 46
French Polynesia 192 39
Galapagos Islands 22
Hawaii 817
Juan Fernández Islands 94
A Pacific Island Nomenclator of Basidiomycete Names (excluding Rusts & Smuts) – Jerry Cooper, July 2011
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