Gulf Coast FungiBaldwin County, Alabama

Get your mushroom sequenced.
Improve science for everyone.

Baldwin County, Alabama — by invitation only during the development period
Gulf Coast Fungi is being built and tested with a small group first. Specimens are accepted by invitation while that lasts.

Gulf Coast Fungi is a local effort, starting in Baldwin County, Alabama, to find the fungi of the Gulf Coast, post quality photographs and description of them on iNaturalist, and send well-prepared specimens for DNA sequencing through MycoMap. A sequenced specimen gets the best name science can give it today, and the sequence becomes public data that anyone can use.

Ways to get a specimen sequenced

There are several ways to get fungi DNA sequenced. You can go to MycoMap or other services directly. Gulf Coast Fungi offers the two options below. Both require the same specimen collection steps, which improve the chance of successful DNA sequencing, validation, and identification; none of those is guaranteed. An iNaturalist account is also needed, and each observation's location setting must be Open or Obscured, not Private: a Private location hides where the specimen was found from everyone but you, and an observation with no place cannot go through sequencing or validation.

  1. Free. Depends on the genus, the location, and the number of specimens submitted; there is no completion date, and results can take many months. Not all locations are eligible for free sequencing.
  2. Expedited, paid. Processed ahead of free work; completion time depends on workload.

The chance of success for either is good, but not guaranteed, for a number of reasons. The standard DNA barcode for fungi is the ITS region, and it does not work equally well in every group. Chanterelles (Cantharellus) are the best-known problem: their ITS1 is extremely long, amplification sometimes fails, and one specimen can carry copies that differ by up to 3%. Length variation in the same region also complicates sequencing in Russula, Lactarius, and Astraeus; polypores can be hard to extract DNA from; and some ascomycetes resist the standard primers. Older material fails more often, and how a specimen was preserved matters. A failed sequence is not a wasted specimen: it is still a documented collection, and labs retry failures with a second marker. Sources: Schoch et al. 2012, PNAS (ITS as the fungal barcode; Cantharellus and Tulasnella named as challenges); Olariaga et al., Cantharellus revisited in Europe (ITS1 extremely long, amplification sometimes unsuccessful, copies diverging up to 3%); barcode-gap study of 717 macrofungal species, 2023 (ITS1 length heterogeneity in Cantharellus, Astraeus, Russula, Lactarius); MycoBlitz 2019 sequencing update, April 2021 (polypores, ascomycetes, LSU retry); Osmundson et al. 2013 (specimen age and taxon affect success). Read 2026-11-03.

So what does Gulf Coast Fungi do?

We put together the 96-tube trays that speed up the process, whether free or paid: dried tissue from each specimen goes into its own tube, a full tray of 96 goes to the lab together, and that is what gets a specimen sequenced sooner.

We also do the validation work on the iNaturalist observations in this project — checking each DNA result against the reference databases — which helps move the identification forward. Training for validators is planned as the project grows, among other things.

Three things first

1. Photograph before you pick. Several angles; something in the frame for scale; the top, the underside, the stem, and where it was growing.
2. Collect a good specimen — whole and fresh — only from a place where you have permission to collect.
3. Post it to iNaturalist. The observation is the public record; DNA results are attached to it later.

Skip a step and the specimen may not be usable.

Where this stands

November 2026: the site is new and volunteers are welcome. There are no scheduled events yet. If you lead forays, teach, manage land, or just collect carefully, check back.

Participants and volunteers: write to contact@gulfcoastfungi.com. One address, read by a person.

When the time is right and the framework is in place, Gulf Coast Fungi will expand across the entire Gulf Coast, from Texas to Florida, county by county, the same way it is starting here.

Where we are starting

The numbers today
How many fungi observations in the five Gulf states carry a DNA sequence, next to every other state and province, and what MycoMap BC did in one year. See the data.
Tammy got here first
Before Gulf Coast Fungi existed, one person was already doing this work in Baldwin County, Alabama. iNaturalist user tammy319 (Tammy) joined iNaturalist at the start of 2021 and has posted about 1,440 verifiable fungi observations, nearly all of them from Baldwin County. Forty-four of them carry an ITS DNA barcode; as of 3 November 2026 the whole county has 46, so 44 of its 46 are hers. The first was a wood ear (Auricularia cornea complex) collected near Foley on 27 October 2021. Thirty-three different fungi, 30 of them identified to species, have a DNA sequence from Baldwin County on iNaturalist because of her. Her specimens also fill part of our first 96-tube tray. Counts from the iNaturalist API, 3 November 2026; see Alabama by county.

Also worth knowing

Lumen Granuli Praecisi (v1.0)
Brian Hunt's lighted extraction workstation: a rack of 96 small tubes lit from below so the tiny tissue fragment in each tube can be seen, with build photos and a video. Hosted for him at mrdbid.com; it will move here.
How we think about being wrong
Gulf Coast Fungi adopts the stance Harte Singer set out for MycoMap's volunteer sequence validators: identification calls rest on judgment, and often there is no single right answer, only the least-wrong choice; science moves by errors found and corrected; a validator should be confident in a determination and ready to be shown wrong; and all of this work happens in public, where critique is what carries science forward. In his words, we should feel "empowered to make the least-wrong choice." Source: Harte Singer, DNAMA Volunteer Sequence Validation Corps Guidebook, version 3 (the 2026-05-04 copy Gulf Coast Fungi works from; public edition on protocols.io).
Not the Gulf Coast Fungi Fest
Gulf Coast Fungi is NOT affiliated with the Gulf Coast Fungi Fest, which I understand is no longer taking place. Let me know of any updates and I will post them here.

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 · contact@gulfcoastfungi.com · Permission and disclaimers · Connections · Text on this site: CC0 (no rights reserved) · Updated 2026-11-04.