Where we are starting

Where we are starting Counties Every state and province

Gulf Coast Fungi starts in Baldwin County, Alabama. This page is the baseline: how many fungi observations on iNaturalist in the five Gulf states carry a DNA sequence today, next to the rest of the continent, so that progress can be measured against something.

The five Gulf states

Place	Fungi observations	Research grade	With ITS barcode	With LSU barcode	ITS per 1,000 observations	US rank by ITS
Florida	330,512	75,105	3,862	102	11.7	10 of 51
Alabama	145,689	41,887	1,964	8	13.5	17 of 51
Texas	432,251	78,556	639	1	1.5	26 of 51
Louisiana	71,974	12,863	475	2	6.6	31 of 51
Mississippi	42,005	9,629	361	8	8.6	34 of 51

Together the Gulf states hold 1,022,431 fungi observations (9.5% of the United States) and 7,301 with an ITS barcode (4.8% of the US total of 153,334). Texas stands out: the most observations of the five, and only 639 barcodes.

For comparison

United States 10,746,938 fungi observations · 153,334 with ITS barcode (14.3 per 1,000)

Canada 2,399,646 · 26,952 (11.2 per 1,000)

World 22,755,245 · 190,169 (8.4 per 1,000)

Leaders California 28,422, Indiana 21,023, Michigan 17,720, Washington 13,578, Pennsylvania 10,161 · British Columbia 15,273

By rate Indiana 116 per 1,000, Idaho 58 per 1,000, Michigan 48 per 1,000, Missouri 46 per 1,000, Arizona 38 per 1,000

Every state and province is on the full table; every county of the five Gulf states is on the county page (a state name in the table above goes straight to its counties).

What is possible: MycoMap BC

British Columbia is the clearest recent example of what organized collecting does. Before fall 2025, fewer than 1,000 BC specimens had been sequenced for the public databases. MycoMap BC launched that fall, sponsored by the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society among others, in partnership with Mycota Lab, which sequences the province's collections free of charge. More than 100 collectors assembled about 12,000 dried, vouchered specimens by January 2026; by mid-February nearly 14,000 collections had been submitted. The first 100-plus sequences were posted to iNaturalist in the second week of January 2026, five volunteer validators reviewed them, and by March 5, 2026 the project had received 700 new sequences and begun automatic validation to keep pace. The iNaturalist project now holds more than 30,000 observations, and the province shows 15,273 ITS-barcoded fungi observations today, of which 14,296 are in the MycoMap BC project itself (project query, 2026-11-03) — behind only California, Indiana, and Michigan among US states. Sources: SVIMS, BC MycoMap Project – First Results (Jan 16, 2026); MycoMap BC project journal on iNaturalist; Victoria News, Feb 19, 2026; MycoMap BC project page on iNaturalist. Read 2026-11-03.

The wider movement

MycoMap Network Mycota Lab, the Ohio Mushroom DNA Lab, FunDiS and NAMA's DNA committee together: by mid-2025 nearly 100,000 sequenced specimens documented across iNaturalist, MycoMap and Mushroom Observer, 65,000 of them individually validated; free sequencing for unlimited specimens from open network locations. Source: "Approaching Full-Scale DNA Barcoding for North American Macrofungi: Highlights from the MycoMap Network," MSA Inoculum, June 2025 (PDF); mycomap.org.

Mycota Lab DNA extraction, amplification and sequencing completed for over 50,000 specimens. Source: mycota.com.

FunDiS The Fungal Diversity Survey (formerly North American Mycoflora Project) issued more than 100 sequencing grants and sequenced over 8,000 specimens from forays across the US and Canada in 2018–2021; its sequencing service closed to new orders after April 30, 2021. Sources: fundis.org, Our History; fundis.org, Start a Project.

NAMA 2024 foray, on site 959 sequencing reactions, 803 validated ITS sequences (83.7%); DNA extraction and PCR were done on site, sequencing finished on the road, and results were validated and posted after the event. Source: bioRxiv, 2025.

Alabama so far The Alabama Mushroom Society won a FunDiS grant in 2021 (50 specimens; nearly half undescribed or never sequenced) and sent 1,003 specimens, including its 2023 Alabama Mushroom Faire collections, under a second grant through Mycota Lab in 2023; more than 900 collections accessioned at the University of West Alabama by August 2024. Source: Alabama Mushroom Society.

GenBank and UNITE MycoMap sequences are deposited in NCBI GenBank once validated (NAMA 2024 report above); UNITE curates fungal ITS reference data. Neither reports counts by US state, so they are not in the table above.

How these numbers were made

Every count is a live query of the iNaturalist API on 2026-11-03: verifiable observations in the iconic taxon Fungi (which includes lichens), by iNaturalist's state or province place, and among them the observations that carry the observation field DNA Barcode ITS (the standard fungal barcode) or DNA Barcode LSU. A sequence posted only on MycoMap or Mushroom Observer and never written to the iNaturalist field is not counted here, so these are floors, not totals. One request per second, under iNaturalist's published limits. The script and the raw results are kept with the site's files.

If you suspect a mushroom poisoning: call US Poison Control, 1-800-222-1222, or your nearest emergency room.

Gulf Coast Fungi · Baldwin County, Alabama · Text on this site: CC0 (no rights reserved) · Counts read from iNaturalist on 2026-11-03.