Yorkshire Waxcaps and beyond: NEYEDC's grassland fungi projects
Fungi rich grasslands are rare and threatened habitats in the UK. Stemming from the launch of our ‘Waxcaps: the hidden jewels in Yorkshire’s grasslands’ project in 2022 (otherwise known as Yorkshire Waxcaps), NEYEDC are now involved in several initiatives across North and East Yorkshire and beyond with the aim of identifying and mapping high-quality grassland fungi sites. Read on to find out more about this exciting suite of projects, and why it is more important than ever to take notice of these often-missed jewels in our grasslands.
What are waxcaps?
When we talk about waxcaps as a group, what we are really referring to is ‘waxcap grassland fungi’. It does, of course, include the waxcaps themselves – familiarly shaped fungi with colourful, waxy or slimy looking caps – but also a range of other strange and beautiful species in the ‘CHEGD’ group. This acronym refers to the spindles, club, and coral fungi (Clavarioids), the waxcaps Hygrocybe genus (although recent DNA investigations have split up the genus), pinkgills (Entoloma), earthtongues (Geoglossum and relatives), and crazed caps (Dermoloma and relatives). What these fungi have in common is the habitat that they are found in; old, unimproved, nutrient-poor grassland habitats.
Why are waxcap grasslands important?
The characteristics of waxcap grasslands – undisturbed or unimproved - make them a rare habitat. Many grasslands are now agriculturally improved through liming and fertilisation or disturbance from ploughing and other practices. They are also particularly vulnerable targets of tree planting schemes. These activities change the soils, which threatens both the integrity of the habitat and its fungal assemblages. The UK is an important stronghold for these habitats, but they are rare and declining. Reflecting this, over 90% of CHEGD species are on at least one IUCN European Red List.
These grasslands are also often overlooked in terms of nature conservation, as the value of a grassland is often only determined by its composition of higher plants, and good waxcap grasslands can have poor plant diversity. Meanwhile, fungi aren’t often utilised as an indicator of habitat quality. This is perhaps due to their relatively short season, complex identification, and the fact that the fruiting bodies of the fungi do not appear every year. Usually, multiple high-resolution surveys over several years are needed to fully appreciate the true diversity of a waxcap site. This leads of a cycle of waxcap grasslands being overlooked as valuable sites.
In an effort to improve this situation, ‘Waxcaps: the hidden jewels in Yorkshire’s grasslands’, our first waxcaps project, launched in 2022. Funded by Yorkshire Water's Biodiversity Enhancement Programme, this 3-year project, now in its second year, has recruited a cohort of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers to help us catalogue and survey these important fungi grassland sites. Two groups of volunteers have been taking part – trained survey volunteers who ‘adopt’ sites over the survey season and visit repeatedly, identifying each species they find, and our casual volunteers, who are able to use our version of Plantlife’s WaxcApp to record fungi diversity based on fungi colour.
Training session at Duncombe.
Initially, potential sites for our dedicated volunteers were identified using existing records in the NEYEDC database, records from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and additional baseline data about CHEGD species richness in different areas from the The Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI). After a year of contribution from our casual volunteers in 2022, using the WaxcApp app, we can now identify new potentially important sites to send to our dedicated survey team to investigate further. Last year, 39 new sites were identified in this way, and a further 30+ have already been identified in 2023! You can view these on our interactive map: www.neyedc.org.uk/waxcaps.
The high-resolution CHEGD records made by our volunteers during these surveys will help create a site-based fungi-rich grassland inventory that can then be shared with partners and stakeholders in the area. We are also working to share the data with Natural England, incorporating the newly identified areas into national databases. The identification of these new fungi grassland sites could also result in them being afforded local or national designation for their fungi interest. Up until now, one of the barriers to this has been the coarse level at which previous records exist. Low-resolution records can’t be easily linked to a specific site, so their boundaries can’t be established. Traditionally, fungi have also been excluded as indicator species, so criteria often don’t exist to allow sites to be designated on their behalf, but this is changing in some areas. Through the dedicated survey work by Steve Hindle and others in West Yorkshire, there is now a specific CHEGD Local Wildlife Site criteria with eight designated LWS and three further candidate LWS identified for their CHEGD assemblages. Hopefully in time the North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire LWS systems can follow suit. We’re looking forward to continuing our Yorkshire Waxcaps project in 2024.
Largely because of publicity of the pilot year of the Yorkshire Waxcaps project, a number of other opportunities have since arisen for us to further our work with fungi in Yorkshire. The first of these additional projects began after being contacted by grassland specialists at Natural England, hoping to map Yorkshire-wide fungi-rich grasslands in the same manner that grasslands in Sussex were mapped by Clare Blencowe at their regional Biological Records Centre in 2022 (Clare also has a brilliant grassland waxcap ID tool which you can find here: https://sxbrc.org.uk/recording/keys/waxcaps/).
As opposed to completing on-the-ground data collection, this work involved collating as many existing CHEGD records from the Yorkshire area as possible, reaching out to other Yorkshire LERCs, local natural history societies, online recording platforms, and other networks. Resulting records were critically examined, assessed, and verified, including removing those at very low resolution, to produce a map of records in ‘heat map’ format. This created a series of fungi-rich hotspots that can now be used as a guide for further survey work, or to help identify new nearby sites.
Another project underway, funded by Natural England Seedcorn Funding, focuses on using eDNA soil sampling as a method of establishing the diversity of CHEGD grasslands. The eDNA (or environmental DNA) process involves taking a soil sample, which is then analysed for the presence of sequences of DNA which are subsequently linked to specific species or species groups. Whilst traditional site surveys or walkovers only allow us to see the fruiting bodies above ground (which are often very transient, sometimes appearing and disappearing within days, then not reappearing for years), eDNA should capture the full breadth of diversity above and below ground. 10 sites across Yorkshire will have full eDNA soil profile analysis undertaken, which will be a mixture of recently or extensively surveyed sites and those not recently surveyed, or those with low numbers of records. Soil analysis will indicate what the potential diversity of these sites could be.
The Yorkshire Waxcaps project also allowed us to highlight Nidderdale National Landscape as a potential area with good fungi-rich grasslands, but currently only having old, or very little data. A bid was made, and accepted, for funds to work with Nidderdale National Landscape to identify at least five sites for professional survey to assess their potential with follow up surveys as needed. Improver’s fungi ID courses (professionally led) and a beginner’s fungi forays have been completed this year and are also planned for 2024 as part of the initiative in Nidderdale.
We’re excited for what the future holds for Yorkshire Waxcaps and the additional grassland fungi projects we’ve undertaken this year. We already have additional funding provided by Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority for professional surveys, further identification training, forays and engagement with land managers lined up for 2024. The identification and protection of good waxcap grasslands is a pressing issue, not only in light of increasing land use change, and tree planting schemes, but also in relation to upcoming legislation such as Local Nature Recovery Strategies, and we hope that our work represents a step forward in the understanding and appreciation of these special habitats in Yorkshire.
To read more about the project and how to get involved, see our webpage: www.neyedc.org.uk/waxcaps
