UW Science Daily: Why are fungi so fascinating both to researchers and to people outside the scientific community?
Prof. Julia Pawłowska: – Fungi are mysterious. From a scientific point of view, we still know surprisingly little about them – far less than we do about plants or animals. But there is also something inherently mysterious about them also for non-academic people: they seem to appear out of nowhere, only to vanish just as suddenly.
A mushroom doesn’t just pop up in your garden and stay there year-round. One season it’s there, the next it’s gone. It shifts and changes. Some years bring an abundance of mushrooms, others only a few. Inevitably, that makes us wonder where they come from, where they are when we don’t see them, and why they appear the way they do.
In my day-to-day work, I study the evolution and systematics of fungi – something that may not sound especially exciting at first. But once you realize it’s really about how organisms change and adapt to their environment, it quickly becomes far more fascinating.
For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of mycology is the way fungi interact with other organisms. For example, in 2005, scientists discovered bacteria living inside the hyphae of the fungus Rhizopus microsporus. It soon became clear that interactions like this are far more widespread than anyone had previously thought.
Today, we know that humans are not the only organisms with microbiomes. Most organisms we encounter – including fungi – are likely complex consortia made up of many different organisms, often called holobiomes.
We are used to seeing a single tree standing in a field. What we often don’t realize, however, is that a tree is itself a consortium of countless associated organisms. Without them, it would not be the tree we see before us.
What won’t we learn about fungi from a Netflix documentary, and what can a mycologist tell us instead?
– I think most people don’t realize just how ubiquitous fungi are – or how little we actually know about them.
Researchers often say that if you sample fungi from a single leaf of a plant in our climate zone, you will find, on average, around 20 species. In reality, all terrestrial ecosystems as we know them – the plants around us and our oxygen-rich atmosphere – exist thanks to constant interactions between fungi and plants. Most land plants interact in some way with fungi. What we’re really looking at are extraordinarily complex networks of interactions that shape the ecosystems we live in – the world as we know it.
I think many negative perceptions of fungi come from both unfamiliarity and their sheer diversity. Scientists have described just over 150,000 fungal species, but estimates suggest there may be as many as 2.5 million. That means we currently know only a small fraction of their true diversity. What we do know is that fungi are essential to how ecosystems function. We know they form beneficial relationships with other organisms, for example through mycorrhizal symbioses.
We also know that they can engage in negative interactions – for example, as human pathogens. But even here, the boundary between “beneficial” and “harmful” is not fixed. Fungi drive decomposition processes, which often carry negative connotations. Yet without decomposition, we would quite literally be buried in organic waste. So in a way, it is a positive process, though it tends to be viewed through negative cultural associations.
We tend to fear what we do not understand. When we hear about a single dangerous fungus, we can start to see fungi as a whole as something threatening, while overlooking the vast number of positive interactions they are involved in.
This is also where citizen science comes in. It helps demystify science and make it more accessible. Research does not have to be distant or inaccessible – many processes can be opened up to broader participation. And I believe that when we understand how things work, we are less likely to fear them.
You co-authored a paper published earlier this year in Biodiversity and Conservation on amateur mycological organizations in Europe. How did the project begin, and what turned out to be the biggest challenge?
– I would say the paper is not the culmination of a project, but rather its starting point. It grew out of discussions within a group of people who wanted fungi to be treated on equal footing with plants and animals.
A key part of the work involves engaging citizen science initiatives across as many European countries as possible. We spent a considerable amount of time simply trying to define what citizen science actually means, since the concept is understood quite differently from one country to another.
In mycology, if you define citizen science broadly as any effort to collect data on fungi, then we are talking about a history that goes back roughly 200 years.
That realization became the inspiration for the paper. Europe has a long tradition of groups documenting fungal diversity in many different ways. While such organizations are numerous, they vary significantly. In some countries, regional associations play the main role, while in others – such as Norway – large national organizations dominate.
What all these institutions and networks have in common is that they bring together people involved in collecting data on fungi. At first, we assumed things would be straightforward: we would launch an online campaign, and people would simply join.
We quickly realized, however, that even identifying where these contributors are located is a major challenge in itself.
Right now, we are looking into the factors that shape participation – what motivates people to get involved in such projects and what keeps them engaged over the long term.
How has doing science changed over the past six years?
– Many of the tools that now feel obvious to me – and that have been standard in biodiversity research globally for the past two decades – were long considered rather niche in Poland.
One example is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), a global infrastructure and the biggest aggregator of biodiversity data from around the world. In countries like Denmark, it has been standard practice for the past 20 years for all biodiversity data to be deposited there.
Poland has been part of this network for a long time, and many institutions are involved in it. However, when it comes to the routine sharing and integration of data, we still have a lot of ground to cover.
In 2019, while working on a study of protected fungi in Poland, I remember being quite frustrated. I was trying to establish which fungal species occur in the country and where they are found, and there was no single place where this information was available.
Instead, the data were scattered across forest districts, regional environmental protection authorities, and universities. There was no infrastructure that brought it all together.
We do have grzyby.pl, a platform created largely by amateur enthusiasts working alongside a small group of professional mycologists. It is the main source of information on macrofungi in Poland – and an excellent one.
But it emerged largely because, as a country, we simply lacked this kind of infrastructure. It was also a consequence of the fact that open data had not been widely embraced in Poland at the time.
In recent years, however, Poland has made real progress in developing an open data policy. It now exists at the national level, is reflected in funding requirements, and institutions are starting to implement it. All National Science Center funded projects now require data management plans. What once required constant effort to push forward is gradually becoming standard practice – and that is a very positive shift.
What does science funding in Poland look like today? How do researchers secure funding, and what can they realistically expect?
– Not very much (laughs).
I think we need to look at this in a broader context. We used to live in a relatively stable, predictable world. That world is gone.
Biology, unfortunately, is an expensive discipline. Experiments cost money, research costs money, and no institution can build serious infrastructure without external funding.
In Poland, I believe the introduction of the so-called Law 2.0 marked a real turning point. Since then, most research funding has come through competitive grants, and institutions have had to adjust to that reality. Over the past six years, we’ve also increasingly turned to international sources. For my group, the National Science Centre used to be virtually the only external funder.
Today, we also apply to the National Centre for Research and Development, European programs, and international consortia. In a way, this has opened new doors – it’s easier to find collaborators who actually share your research interests. And in many ways, that makes sense.
Science, perhaps more than anything else, is about change. It has to move fast. It’s not a factory where you decide how to produce a screw and repeat it for 20 years. It’s a place where entirely new things are created.
That also means there has to be space for risk. Innovation is uncertain by definition – some projects will fail. But they still need to be funded. If we don’t test ideas, we simply don’t know what’s possible.
As for the Excellence Initiative – Research University (IDUB) program, I think our group really struck gold.
Again, it was a matter of luck, timing and circumstances coming together.
In 2019, the 18th Congress of European Mycologists took place in Warsaw and Białowieża. That’s when many of us started new collaborations – and at the same time, IDUB had just been launched.
Shortly after the conference, I joined the mentoring program, and Professor Urmas Kõljalg from Tartu came to visit. That was especially meaningful, because the University of Warsaw has historically had very strong ties with the University of Tartu. Researchers moved between the two institutions, ran joint projects, collaborated closely.
In fact, within our institutes, we could still find senior professors – two generations above us -– who had worked together directly. After 1989, many of those connections were lost as institutions turned their attention westward.
But researchers in Western Europe don’t always understand post-transformation contexts as well as colleagues from Estonia do. Professor Kõljalg’s visit eventually led to our collaboration on FunDive (a project that uses DNA analysis, artificial intelligence, and the knowledge of mushroom enthusiasts to discover and protect previously unknown fungal species – editor’s note).
Today, postdocs from Tartu come to Warsaw for research stays, and that stay was also funded by IDUB. The program coincided with the moment I was building my own research group. It gave us room to expand international collaborations, send students and PhD candidates abroad, attend conferences, and cover open-access publishing costs.
Without it, we simply wouldn’t have been able to grow in the same way.
“Research University: Five questions for…” is a series of interviews with researchers at the University of Warsaw who have carried out their projects within the framework of the Initiative of Excellence – Research University (IDUB) program.
The text was originally published in Polish on the Serwis Naukowy UW website on June 22, 2026.
