Development roadmap

Development Roadmap for the Mycomap.org Wiki

Overview

This page outlines the goals and philosophical direction for the ongoing development of a dynamic, wiki-style platform for documenting fungal biodiversity. The project aims to document what is known about each fungal taxon whether undescribed or described, creating a collaborative, data-integrated, and evidence-based system for fungal taxonomy.

The idea for this wiki emerged from a discussion on Facebook, and the thoughts below have been distilled from comments made by the participants. Their comments have been grouped into themes to guide ongoing development.

Project Goals

A Dynamic, Crowd-Sourced Species Platform

• Stephen Russell proposed creating a wiki-style platform inspired by sites like MycoQuebec, Hebeloma.org, and MushroomExpert.com. Unlike existing platforms, this new system will aggregate species data from multiple sources, integrating sequence data and observational data to create composite species profiles.

Data Integrity and Annotation Philosophy

• Stephen Russell argued that species descriptions should be anchored in sequenced collections. Any features not tied to sequenced specimens should be explicitly marked as speculative. "Without a sequenced specimen, it's a rumor."
• Jacob Pulk responded with a counterpoint, noting that even features from sequenced specimens can be misinterpreted and that useful insights can be derived from well-documented but unsequenced observations. He advocated for transparent speculation, which he sees as a productive step toward hypothesis building.

Core Development Principles

Evidence-Based Descriptions

Species pages will evolve only when supported by sufficient, repeatable, sequenced observations. This avoids perpetuating speculation-based taxonomy.

• Stephen Russell stated the importance of waiting for a critical mass of sequenced observations before finalizing species descriptions.
• Jacob Pulk highlighted how this approach balances data integrity with flexible hypothesis generation.

Annotation and Transparency

Speculative content will be allowed but clearly labeled. This encourages participation while maintaining scientific rigor.

Integration, Not Duplication

• Stephen Russell explained that the project will build on, rather than replicate, platforms like iNaturalist and Mushroom Observer by aggregating and annotating data.
• David McCheyne questioned how this approach differs from existing systems. Stephen replied that current platforms lack validated species descriptions and data integration across systems.

Technical and Philosophical Roadmap

Minimize Human Labor in Data Entry

• Stephen Russell emphasized automation as a key to scalability: “The more humans have to do, the less scalable and less sustainable the project is.”
• Alan Rockefeller created User:Taxonomybot, a Pywikibot that edits articles. Currently it makes sure each article has a References section which links to all sequenced observations of each taxon / provisional species name.

Crowdsourced AI Training

• Stephen Russell proposed developing a "FungiAI" to automate tasks like:
  • Detecting fungi in photos.
  • Cropping images for training sets.
  • Writing draft species descriptions from annotated images.
  • Assisting in identification.
• The training and validation sets would be crowd-sourced, benefiting the global mycological community.

ITS Stability and Biogeographic Patterns

• Myco Geeky noted that platforms like this could help track population-level stability in the ITS region over time. This may reveal:
  • Cryptic speciation.
  • Substrate-linked divergence.
  • Sequence variation correlated with ecological or morphological shifts.

Interoperability with Other Platforms

The wiki could connect to other databases (e.g., iNaturalist, GenBank, MycoPortal) and serve as a central hub for species-level synthesis, rather than a competing system.

Long-Term Vision

Species pages could serve as living records that organically grow into formal, peer-reviewed descriptions over time. Authorship and contribution credit will be transparently documented.

Community Involvement

Multiple contributors have offered to help in different ways:

• Alan Rockefeller - Sysadmin and developer
• Michael DeLola - Developer
• Adam Boring – Interested in learning Wikimedia and working with temp codes and sequence data.
• Andy Donegan – Offers knowledge on microfungi and general support.
• Nicolas Schwab – Started a similar project and is interested in collaborating.
• Jacob Pulk, David McCheyne, and others – Provided essential philosophical dialogue shaping the project’s core tenets.

Project Status

Development is currently underway, with Stephen Russell, Alan Rockefeller, and Michael DeLola working on early technical foundations.

Get Involved

If you're interested in contributing to the development, annotation, or data integration process, reach out - or just start creating pages for provisional species names or scientific names and adding information.