Susana C. Gonçalves 🍄🧪🌍👩🏻‍🔬💪💬

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds A statistical analysis found that the number of fake journal articles being churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every year and a half.

“If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed." Here's my story on the accelerating growth of systemic research fraud--aka paper mills. Gift link: nyti.ms/45rDirw

A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

This new paper documents a tenfold increase in research papers using community-collected iNaturalist data over just five years: tr.ee/89Ot3I

According to the study, here are four key ways that iNaturalist data directly powers science 🧵⤵️

Our new paper in BioScience shows how iNaturalist data is powering research across the globe, with use growing 10x in 5 years and spanning 128 countries & 638 families of life.

Paper: doi.org/10.1093/bios...

@ifas.ufl.edu @inaturalist.bsky.social

#Biodiversity #iNaturalist #OpenScience

Who lives underground?

Find out now in our new paper published in @nature.com.

Key finding: 90% of predicted mycorrhizal biodiversity hotspots lie outside protected areas.

Read here: buff.ly/WmDqAP3 🧵

The scope of #fungi #biodiversity is only beginning to be fathomed.

Every day almost ten new species are described. 🍄🤯

David Hibbett László Nagy and Henrik Nilsson introduce the fungal tree of life. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Overcoming the disconnect between species interaction networks and biodiversity conservation Decision-makers need to act now to halt biodiversity loss, and ecologists must provide them with relevant species interaction indicators to inform about community- and ecosystem-level changes. Yet, the integration of ecological networks into conservation is still virtually nonexistent. Here, we argue that existing data and methodologies are sufficient to generate network information usable for conservation and to begin overcoming existing barriers to the integration of network information and biodiversity decision-making. Interaction network indicators must meet criteria important to decision-makers and be tied to specific conservation goals, which requires academics to better engage with practitioners. We use network robustness as an example of an already applicable indicator and showcase its potential with a reusable workflow to inform decision-making.

Online now: Overcoming the disconnect between species interaction networks and biodiversity conservation

A dried specimen of a stinkhorn fungus with a long, textured brown stem and a blackened cap, shown beside a coin and a tiny preserved fungal piece for scale.

Four glass test tubes with cork stoppers each containing a small, dried fungus specimen; a coin is placed in front for scale.

This #FungiFriday we are looking at a fun-size Phallus from the Fungarium. We are used to seeing much larger Phallus sp. here in the UK, so we were surprised when we saw this micro-phallus species – Phallus tenuis. This adorable specimen shows size truly does not matter!

😅

😂

Talvez Volvariella.

Our newest special issue is now live! Check it out to discover more about diverse and beautiful Fungi🍄🍄‍🟫🍄 On the cover: the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, releasing its spores in the early morning light. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Functional Ecology: Vol 39, No 6 <em>Functional Ecology</em> journal publishes high-impact research providing a mechanistic understanding of ecological pattern and process from the organismic to ecosystem scale.

SPECIAL FOCUS: MYCORRHIZAL NETWORKS

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13652435...

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

Yes, it's long. Yes, it's complex. Yes, it's detailed. And yes, it will make you sad unto nihilistic depression. But it's also necessary to read because AI is going to fuck the planet beyond expression. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

"A cacao tree with fruit pods in various stages of ripening. Taken on the Big Island (Hawaii) in the botanical gardens." "Chocolate is created from the cocoa bean. A cacao tree with fruit pods in various stages of ripening." Photo by Medicaster, Wikimedia

The only reason you love chocolate is because of FUNGUS.

Cacao seeds contain high amounts of polyphenols, making them intensely bitter & unpleasant. There are two natural fungi that do the heavy lifting in turning them into chocolate.

Let's do a quick tour of the process of chocolate making.

📖Published📖

Matthew Kling presents phylospatial, a new R package that fully supports probability, abundance, and binary community data across a range of spatial phylogenetic diversity (PD) analyses 🌎 🧪 Check the article out here 👇

buff.ly/onf4BV6

Phone + @inaturalist.bsky.social App, power bank, basket, knife, notebook, pencil, hand lens, small saw, pruning scissor, share box.

Can you guess the kind of urban wildlife I appreciate?

You've guessed it 🍄
Fungi too are wildlife ☺️

#Fungi #Funga #UrbanBiodiversity

Wind Patterns Influence the Dispersal and Assembly of North American Soil Fungal Communities Wind is the primary vector of fungal spore dispersal. We document that windflow patterns, both the direction and magnitude, exhibit a significant influence on the composition and diversity of soil fu....

Wind dispersal shapes fungal communities, especially mushroom forming species. Nice study design by Peter Pellitier and @mykophile.bsky.social ‬ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A tray containing dried fungal specimens with sponge-like textures, stored in Kew’s Fungarium collection.

MAJOR MILESTONE for fungal science! 🍄💻

Our entire Fungarium - 1.1 million dried fungi specimens - is now fully imaged!👇1/4
ow.ly/w9JX50VT9FA

Image of the front cover of Field Mycology with the BMS logo at the top, the title "Field Mycology" in crimson below it, and a large photo of a cream-coloured cyphelloid fungus growing among glistening moist liverworts.

This #FungiFriday we want to share the latest issue of Field Mycology! This is the first issue to be edited by Kew Mycologist @clareblencowe.bsky.social and marks the publication now being #OpenAccess

Check it out at fieldmycology.org

An image of two lionfish. Overlay text reads: Major New Resource, Global Impacts Dataset of Invasive Alien Species

🗞️Authors from the @ipbes.net #InvasiveAlienSpecies Report have published the Global Impacts Dataset of Invasive Alien Species derived from the report, creating a global resource for investigating and managing the impacts of invasive alien species. 🌍🧪

Read more in ‪@nature.com‬ bit.ly/43APoP7

2 WEEKS LEFT!
🎉 Your ideas are key to #ECSA2026! Submit your topics for panels, workshops & more by June 3rd. Be part of the conversation on "Citizen Science between Centre and Periphery" in Oulu, Finland.
👉 www.ecsa2026.ngo/call-for-top...

#CitizenScience #Oulu2026 #ScienceConference #LastCall

*Picture your favorite animal, plant or fungus. There, I've fixed it for you.

*Take a picture of an animal, plant or fungus.
There, I've fixed it for you.

How cool is this?!
Two species of #lichens are new records for Portugal and Macaronesia, one species is a new record for the Azores and nine species are new records for Terceira Island. This is the first academic publication for 11 of the 12 lichen species 🥳 #CitizenScience

ECM colonised root cross section. Photo credit Tess McBride

For Australian Domestic students interested in pursuing a PhD in molecular mycorrhizal studies, please consider applying for a scholarship-funded position in my lab (tinyurl.com/jxcdhp3p) - our lab is a diverse group studying plant-microbe interactions from genes to landscapes

🤔 www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/fu...

Fungus from the human gut slows liver disease in mice The disease affects almost one-third of adults and treatments are limited.

A common intestinal fungus produces a molecule that reduces symptoms of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in mice, according to research published in Science today1.

https://go.nature.com/4lSKkwR

Cynthia Erivo in a black and red dress. Photo copyright Harpers Bazaar

A black fungus ball with red and transparent droplets © Max Mudie, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)

This year’s #metgala was based on M.L. Miller’s groundbreaking book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.

...As usual some celebs missed the theme, dressing as some of our favourite fungi 🍄✨

Starting with Cynthia Erivo as Cosmospora arxii 🍄🧵👇

☺️