Doctoral defence: Ovidiu Copoț "Relevance of eDNA, citizen science, and species distribution modelling for fungal conservation"

On August 22 at 10:15 Ovidiu Copoț will defend his doctoral thesis "Relevance of eDNA, citizen science, and species distribution modelling for fungal conservation" for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Botany and Mycology).

Supervisors:
Dr. Kadri Runnel, University of Tartu
Professor Asko Lõhmus, University of Tartu

Opponent:
Professor Hans Henrik Bruun, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Summary:
Fungal conservation remains underdeveloped compared to that of plants and animals, largely due to data limitations and the unique characteristics of fungal lifecycles. This thesis investigates how integrating different data sources—namely DNA metabarcoding and observations from public databases and citizen science—can improve knowledge for fungal conservation planning.

The first part explores how these data sources can be used to assess species extinction risks and monitor biotic assemblages indicative of landscape degradation. It shows how soil eDNA samples increase the range size estimates and the number of recorded threatened fungal species in datasets, and how freshwater eDNA from ditches reveal community compositions and landscape change due to drainage. The studies also reveal the limitations of individual fungal data sources, highlighting an integration need. For example, citizen science provided valuable data for lichens monitoring in Estonia, but rare species were underreported.

The second part of the thesis applies species distribution modeling to predict the distributions of a set of threatened fungal species across Europe based on records, climate, and habitat data. The results show that for the threatened fungi, currently protected areas fall short of the EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy targets. Moreover, it appears suboptimal to resolve those shortfalls for each country separately, compared to regionally coordinated improvement in protection and habitat restoration. However, the modelling results have to be interpreted with care, as one study revealed significant variation in how future habitat trends could be interpreted for climate change scenarios.

Overall, this thesis demonstrates that eDNA, citizen science, and species distribution models can together address several key data gaps and thus strengthen fungal conservation.