PHOTOS: “Fungus hunter” from Santa Catarina finds rare species in the forests of SC

Santa Catarina fungus is bright blue in color and measures between 0.5 and 2 cm (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

The year was 2020 and, in the middle of the forests of Urubici, in the mountainous region of Santa Catarina, researcher and biologist Luis Funez accidentally spotted a tiny blue fungus, growing in the middle of the moss. He saved a copy to see what it was about later. Four years later, he published the discovery: a new species of the rare genus Microglossumlast seen in Brazil more than 90 years ago.

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The biologist dubbed the new species Microglossum azeurum, in reference to the color of the fungus. It is not yet possible to determine why the pigmentation is blue, but the genus tends to have vibrant colors, such as red, purple and yellow, found mainly in the Northern Hemisphere. The bright blue of the species from Santa Catarina has never been recorded anywhere else.

The researcher says that the find was pure luck, as this genre only appears over long periods of time. Therefore, he nicknamed his discovery the “fungal unicorn”.

— It’s something I’ll probably never see again in my entire life. It was a unique moment. Experiences in Europe and North America show that once you’ve seen these species, you won’t see them for 10, 20, 30 years or more. These fungi do not have a regular appearance period.

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Rare discovery

The discovery of Microglossum azeurum occurred during Luis’ doctorate, when he became involved in the Long-Term Ecological Research project (Peld), at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), with the aim of studying the biodiversity of fungi in the State. During months of regular expeditions to São Joaquim National Park, Luis and his colleagues scoured the soil for evidence of these organisms.

The park was chosen because of its unique environment, characterized by altitudes of more than a thousand meters, low temperatures and shrouded in fog. They are low trees, covered in moss, which favor the emergence of rare species.

— The research area was in patches of forest “hidden in the valleys”, where we see clouds coming in and bringing constant humidity from the sea that makes these forests always super humid, full of dripping moss — describes the researcher.

See images of the new species of fungus

Discovery by Luis Funez is the first work in more than 90 years to deal with these fungi in Brazil (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

In the habitat, tiny blue fungi grow next to liverwort moss (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal Archive)

Peld Project, from UFSC, made regular expeditions to the São Joaquim National Park to catalog fungal species (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

Research took place in the cloud forest in Urubici, SC, in patches of forest “hidden in the valleys” (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

Research group included other researchers (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

Species found in Mato Grosso is larger than the one found in SC (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

In total, Luis described three species of Microglossuns (Photo: Luis Funez, Personal archive)

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Other species

After finding the blue fungus, Luis decided to search the internet, in forums that included researchers and “fungus hunters” — lay people who “hunted” species on their own.

Until then, a copy of Microglossum It had only been collected in Brazil by Johannes Rick, in 1931, in Rio Grande do Sul, and described 11 years later, by the Japanese Sanchi Imai.

The internet search was successful and Luis found two other people who had also found Microglossunsone in Bahia and another in Mato Grosso do Sul. Both specimens were yellow.

— When I started analyzing this material, I was considering the two yellow ones as a single species, but we had them sequenced in South Korea, we took the DNA and when the sequences came back, we saw that they were different things.

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Luis’ study then records three new species of Microglossum: one was the blue one he found and the other two came from the “fungus hunters”. The discovery was published in March in the international scientific journal Phytotaxa and can be accessed in this website.