A lack of information on the population biology of fungi has greatly hindered efforts to understand their biology and to include them in conservation discussions and action plans. Studies have been severely limited by difficulties in obtaining genetic markers to differentiate among individuals and populations needed to examine issues such as fragmentation, the effect of pollution, and potential over-harvesting for food. A pilot project to use newly developed high-throughput DNA sequencing tools to obtain informative markers was completed in 2013 and the resulting manuscript was published in 2014. Fieldwork in Montana and Wyoming by Mueller obtained samples for an investigation that is using these techniques to compare the population structure of two closely related Laccaria speices that differ in their reproductive biology (Mueller, Wilson, and colleagues).