Thursday, April 30th, 7:30 pm
On Zoom (Link Below)

Amanita phalloides (the death cap) is an invasive mushroom. So is Amanita muscaria (the fly agaric). Lately, my lab has been wondering why so many species of the genus Amanita are stuffed so full of potent specialized metabolites, and we’ve been asking if chemistry is one mechanism invasive mushrooms use to spread. So far, we’ve got conflicting stories: As A. muscaria has moved through South Africa, its metabolites haven’t changed much. (And by the way, its metabolites seem to kill nematodes and not flies.) By contrast, gene expression data suggest A. phalloides is using its chemistry in new and interesting ways in its invasive Californian range. At this talk I’ll discuss our lab’s recent publications and hint at where we think this is all going.

Anne Pringle was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and spent her childhood traveling through Southeast Asia and West Africa. After completing a Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the faculty at Harvard University. She next moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she is now a Vilas Distinguished Achievement and the Mary Herman Rubinstein Professor in the Departments of Botany and Bacteriology, as well as Chair of the Botany Dept. She has given hundreds of talks to academic and popular audiences in multiple countries and has been awarded the Alexopoulos Prize for a Distinguished Early Career Mycologist, the Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Harvard University Graduate Student Council, the Fannie Cox Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching from Harvard University, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, the Mid-Career Mycorrhiza Research Excellence Award from the International Mycorrhiza Society, and a Fulbright U.S. Scholarship (taken to South Africa). Anne’s research focuses on understanding the biodiversity of fungi. Her many papers on invasive mushrooms and lichens bear witness to the changes happening on Earth, and as a teacher her aim is to draw attention to fungi, revealing them as ubiquitous and essential species of our landscapes.