Biodiv Sci ›› 2020, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (1): 41-53.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2019164

• Editorial • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Assessment of the threatened status of macro-basidiomycetes in China

Tiezheng Wei1,Ke Wang1,2,Xiaodan Yu3,Yi Li4,Haijun Wu1,Hongmei Wu1,Yonghui Wang1,2,Xiaodan Wei1,Binbin Li1,Lan Jiang1,Yijian Yao1,*()   

  1. 1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101
    2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049
    3. Colloge of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866
    4. School of Food Science and Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225127
  • Received:2019-05-14 Accepted:2019-07-09 Online:2020-01-20 Published:2019-12-24
  • Contact: Yijian Yao

Abstract:

A red list assessment of macrofungi was performed to determine the threatened status of known macro-basidiomycetes in China. Forty-five species were considered threatened, with species classified as either Possibly Extinct (PE), Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN) or Vulnerable (VU). These species account for 0.72% of the 6,268 macro-basidiomycete species. More than one-third of the threatened species are edible or medicinal fungi, and most of them are uncultivable, meaning they only grow in the wild. The threatened basidiomycete species are mainly distributed across Southwest and Northeast China. The main threats to these species are shrinking and destruction of habitat caused by human activities, although excessive picking is a major threat for the edible and medicinal species. However, there were insufficient data for 4,251 macro-basidiomycetes species, 67.82% of all species, which suggests that this red list assessment is incomplete.

Key words: fungi, red list, threatened species, edible or medicinal fungi