The critically endangered tea tree fingers fungus. Photo: RGB By Catherine Watson
SOME rare and threatened species are cute. Think southern brown bandicoots. Others, such as powerful owls, are impressive. Then there are the others that only a scientist could love. The tea tree fingers fungus is one of those rare species.
And Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher is one of those scientists. She has dedicated her career to something that very people know about, or could possibly care about if they did.
The indifference is no mystery to her. “It’s literally brown bumps on top of brown bark, smaller than a 50 cent piece,” she says, and laughs.
SOME rare and threatened species are cute. Think southern brown bandicoots. Others, such as powerful owls, are impressive. Then there are the others that only a scientist could love. The tea tree fingers fungus is one of those rare species.
And Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher is one of those scientists. She has dedicated her career to something that very people know about, or could possibly care about if they did.
The indifference is no mystery to her. “It’s literally brown bumps on top of brown bark, smaller than a 50 cent piece,” she says, and laughs.
They might be little brown bumps but they are her brown bumps, one of Australia’s most critically endangered species and the only fungus listed under Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.
Small isolated populations have been found in the Western Port woodlands – Grantville, The Gurdies and Adams Creek nature conservation reserves – but in 30 years of monitoring never more than three specimens have been found at a time. They are always in small patches, isolated and threatened by human disturbance, land clearing, sand mining and fire.
In the summer of 2019, when fire roared through the Grantville bushland, it stopped just 100 metres from the only known population in that reserve. A bulldozer got to within 80 metres.
“This is the problem with rare species,” Sapphire says. “Those woodlands are so cleared you’ve got to raise awareness. Anything we have left is precious.”
Small isolated populations have been found in the Western Port woodlands – Grantville, The Gurdies and Adams Creek nature conservation reserves – but in 30 years of monitoring never more than three specimens have been found at a time. They are always in small patches, isolated and threatened by human disturbance, land clearing, sand mining and fire.
In the summer of 2019, when fire roared through the Grantville bushland, it stopped just 100 metres from the only known population in that reserve. A bulldozer got to within 80 metres.
“This is the problem with rare species,” Sapphire says. “Those woodlands are so cleared you’ve got to raise awareness. Anything we have left is precious.”
*****
In June, when she and her team of 16 – naturalists and horticulturists from the Royal Botanical Gardens plus local volunteers – headed for French Island in search of the extremely rare tea-tree fingers fungus, their hopes were modest.
“When we had shown photos of the kind of habitat where the fungus is found, people told us we should try French Island. We said we didn’t know if we would find anything but let’s give it a go.”
On their first day, 10 minutes after they started looking, at the first spot they went to, her colleague Dr Michael Amor called out: “What about this?”
And there it was. A tea-tree fungus. “Yes!” she shouted. The others thought she was joking. But they found nine fruiting fungi. Beyond their wildest dreams. And that wasn’t the end of it. During the lunch break Gardens’ horticulturist Penny Evans went exploring and found the largest-ever recorded population of the fungus, close to 100 – more than the total of all previous observations made on the mainland.
“When we had shown photos of the kind of habitat where the fungus is found, people told us we should try French Island. We said we didn’t know if we would find anything but let’s give it a go.”
On their first day, 10 minutes after they started looking, at the first spot they went to, her colleague Dr Michael Amor called out: “What about this?”
And there it was. A tea-tree fungus. “Yes!” she shouted. The others thought she was joking. But they found nine fruiting fungi. Beyond their wildest dreams. And that wasn’t the end of it. During the lunch break Gardens’ horticulturist Penny Evans went exploring and found the largest-ever recorded population of the fungus, close to 100 – more than the total of all previous observations made on the mainland.
The successful team of fungi hunters, French Island, June 2021. Dr Sapphire McMullan-Fisher is second from left.
Does that mean the job is done for the finger fungus team? Not quite, says Sapphire.
“It’s still critically endangered. Even vulnerable species become extinct … even common species.
“But there is relief. It is reassuring because they were found in a national park, it’s a large patch of bush, it’s less threatened, it’s managed for conservation.”
And it’s also the first real opportunity to study a population and work out why it’s successful.
“The problem with rare things is that you know so little about them because you don’t see them very often. You have less opportunity to understand them. Why are some populations so unhappy or not reproducing? Perhaps they are slow and steady whereas this population will perhaps be a boom and bust and in a couple of years there’ll be nothing. We don’t know.”
This weekend, Sapphire’s team and some local volunteers will return to the island. They will observe and monitor the known population, they will search for more fungi, and they will talk to residents of the island so they will be able to recognise the fungus if they see it.
With the program winding down soon, future discoveries will probably depend on citizen scientists. She encourages them to report their findings on Fungimap which also includes guides to identification.
July and August are best months for finding them because that’s when they reach their maximum size, not quite as big as a 50 cent piece.
Sapphire says people sometimes ask her why she’s so interested in the tea tree fingers fungus. “What does it actually do?”
“The answer is that we don’t know. It’s a micro parasite, a fungus that lives on a fungus that lives on tea tree. Fungi generally are important indicators of health. They’re part of the whole system.
“To me every living thing is valuable. Every time you lose a species from a system we don’t know what the consequences are, but we do know that when you lose lots of species across the board, things start to fail.”
She’s grateful for where the search for “her fungus” has taken her. “Some of those woodlands are amazing places where I get to go and look for this thing and see sundews and orchids and small birds. It’s so precious.”
“It’s still critically endangered. Even vulnerable species become extinct … even common species.
“But there is relief. It is reassuring because they were found in a national park, it’s a large patch of bush, it’s less threatened, it’s managed for conservation.”
And it’s also the first real opportunity to study a population and work out why it’s successful.
“The problem with rare things is that you know so little about them because you don’t see them very often. You have less opportunity to understand them. Why are some populations so unhappy or not reproducing? Perhaps they are slow and steady whereas this population will perhaps be a boom and bust and in a couple of years there’ll be nothing. We don’t know.”
This weekend, Sapphire’s team and some local volunteers will return to the island. They will observe and monitor the known population, they will search for more fungi, and they will talk to residents of the island so they will be able to recognise the fungus if they see it.
With the program winding down soon, future discoveries will probably depend on citizen scientists. She encourages them to report their findings on Fungimap which also includes guides to identification.
July and August are best months for finding them because that’s when they reach their maximum size, not quite as big as a 50 cent piece.
Sapphire says people sometimes ask her why she’s so interested in the tea tree fingers fungus. “What does it actually do?”
“The answer is that we don’t know. It’s a micro parasite, a fungus that lives on a fungus that lives on tea tree. Fungi generally are important indicators of health. They’re part of the whole system.
“To me every living thing is valuable. Every time you lose a species from a system we don’t know what the consequences are, but we do know that when you lose lots of species across the board, things start to fail.”
She’s grateful for where the search for “her fungus” has taken her. “Some of those woodlands are amazing places where I get to go and look for this thing and see sundews and orchids and small birds. It’s so precious.”