Poland's picture of fungi still rests on herbaria

GBIF labels every record with a basisOfRecord field — how the organism came to be known. A query made on 15 August 2026 comparing that breakdown for the fungal kingdom globally and for Poland produces two different pictures of the same field.

Worldwide the largest group is human observations: 27,767,480 records, or 45.9 per cent of the total. Preserved specimens account for 14,079,112 records, or 23.3 per cent, and material samples — largely environmental sequences — for 28.5 per cent. In Poland the order is reversed: preserved specimens make up 256,607 records, or 57.4 per cent, human observations 97,204 records, or 21.7 per cent, and material samples 12.7 per cent.

The difference says nothing about fungi and everything about who records them and how. The Polish holding was built mainly inside institutions: digitised herbaria and fungaria, assembled over decades and published in bulk. The global holding is driven to a large extent by citizen-science platforms where one person adds an observation with a photograph. Each model has its own strengths — a specimen can be re-examined and sequenced years later, an observation cannot — observations accumulate fast and widely, specimens slowly and in patches.

The practical consequence is about reading maps. A map built on the Polish holding largely shows the reach of herbarium work rather than the range of a species. Before comparing two regions or two countries, check whether the same kind of knowledge is being compared. The values above are a snapshot and will change as further datasets are published.

One filter, two documentation histories

Across the 60,750,818-record global resource, human observations account for 45.92%, preserved specimens 23.28% and material samples 28.55%. In Poland’s 450,470 records, preserved specimens make up 57.03%, human observations 21.92%, material samples 12.84% and material citations 7.88%.

The shares come from simultaneous faceted GBIF queries. Categories describe how a record was documented, not its truth or scientific value. The strong specimen share demonstrates the importance of Polish collections and digitisation, while also showing that open-data patterns partly reflect institutional history.