New species of mushroom from Africa named after Ewald Langer

Around 150,000 species of fungi are scientifically known and described worldwide. Many more are still undiscovered - it is estimated that there are several million species of fungi on our planet. Scientists in Benin have now discovered and described two new species, one of which they named Coltricia langeri in honor of the Kassel biologist and mushroom expert Dr. Ewald Langer. The genus of long-lived spores is distributed worldwide; they live in symbiosis with the root system of other plants.

Langer has been head of the Department of Ecology at the University of Kassel since 2002. For a time he was president of the German Society for Mycology. He is a world-renowned expert on fungi and has already found and described numerous species himself. The discoverers of the new species emphasized that Langer had contributed significantly to the documentation of fungi worldwide, with a particular focus on Benin and Cameroon. One of the discoverers of Coltricia langeri, mushroom researcher Dr. Boris A. Olou from Benin, was a visiting scientist at the Department of Ecology at the University of Kassel from 2018 to 2020.

Langer was delighted about the naming, but even more so about the discovery: "In addition to changes in land use, climate change is also leading to the extinction of species," he commented. "This makes it all the more important to know the species that colonize our planet before they disappear."

Description in the scientific journal Mycologia: https://doi.org/10.1080/00275514.2025.2559555.

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Ewald Langer
University of Kassel
Department of Ecology
https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb10/institute/biologie/fachgebiete/oekologie/prof-dr-ewald-langer.html