The Macrofungi Collection Consortium

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: The Macrofungi Collection Consortium (MaCC) is a digitization project funded by the National Science Foundation's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program. The main scientific objective of the MaCC project was to provide baseline data for determining the extent and distribution of macrofungal diversity. METHODS AND RESULTS: Between 2012 and 2017, 39 participating institutions digitized approximately 1,250,000 specimens of macrofungi from U.S. herbaria. These newly digitized data, combined with existing data and contributions from the Microfungi Collections Consortium, have created a database of approximately 3.4 million specimen records that are shared online through MyCoPortal, a Symbiota‐based data portal. In addition to the digitized herbarium specimen data, MyCoPortal also contains descriptions, illustrations, and observational records. DISCUSSION: The database of digitized specimen data created through this project is a resource for both amateur and professional mycologists. The data provided through MyCoPortal will provide a foundation for a comprehensive Mycoflora of North America. Such a project is now under development as a collaboration between the professional and amateur mycological communities, with the goal of documenting the macrofungi of North America with gene sequences as well as phenotypic descriptions and images.