Events

This talk will discuss the common edible chanterelle mushrooms and their relatives. Despite their appearance, chanterelles are close relatives of a wide assortment of fungi with diverse forms that play many different roles in our ecosystems. How is it that such an oddball assortment of fungi are all closely related? How many species of chanterelles grow in North America? How can you tell species apart from each other, and from lookalikes? We will cover these topics and more!

Rachel Swenie is a mycologist with expertise in the macrofungi of eastern North America. She earned her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee and is currently a Farlow Fellow at Harvard University. 

Most fungi are completely invisible to humans. While we love to admire beautiful mushrooms and other large fruiting bodies in the forest, entire communities of cryptic and microscopic fungi are living and growing under our feet. Single-celled fungi, also known as yeasts, are among these cryptic fungi. Because they are single-celled, we can't see them with our own eyes, and yet they exist in almost all environments on Earth. The single-celled growth form evolved several times from hyphal ancestors and is common worldwide, but yeasts' roles in ecosystems are often mysterious.
In this talk, I will introduce you to the wonderful world of naturally-occurring yeasts; giving some historic context on how humans have been interacting with yeasts for thousands of years, before discussing what we do and don't know about yeast ecology in nature. Then I'll discuss my own work with yeasts: I work with yeasts in several natural New England habitats, including temperate forests and carnivorous plants. I am working to expand our knowledge of yeast ecology and evolution by focusing on how yeasts interact with other living things in nature. With this talk, I hope to give audience members a new appreciation for the mysterious and intriguing invisible fungal diversity they encounter every day.

The taxonomic position of slime moulds has baffled naturalists and scientists for centuries. When “the father of taxonomy” Swedish botanists Carl Linneus devised his system of classification he included slime moulds (and fungi) in the plant kingdom. Slime moulds were subsequently placed in various kingdoms but are now regarded as amoebozoans.

Sarah Lloyd has observed slime moulds in a eucalypt forest at Birralee Tasmania for 13 years. It is now considered a hotspot for myxomycetes, with over 120 species documented from the site including 4 hitherto undescribed species, one new genus and more new species awaiting further study. In this webinar Sarah will discuss these and also describe the important ecological roles of slime moulds.

Sarah Lloyd has had a lifelong love of birds, and since 1988 when she moved to live in a forest at Black Sugarloaf, Birralee in central north Tasmania, an interest in plants, bryophytes, fungi and slime moulds. She has contributed to several citizen science projects including the Australian Bird Count, and Fungimap, a project to record Australia’s undocumented fungal species. It was through Fungimap that Sarah was introduced to slime moulds. In 2019 she was awarded an OAM (Order of Australia medal) for “services to conservation – and slime moulds”. She is author of numerous books, including Where the Slime Moulds Creep (4th Edition, 2022).

We will present an overview of the taxonomy and distribution of the species of Pluteus in North America based on morphological studies and molecular phylogenies. A total of 120 taxa (species and varieties) of Pluteus have been described from or reported in North America, but currently only c. 40 of these species have been confirmed to occur here, based on molecular data generated from North American voucher collections. We will discuss the ongoing, collaborative projects to clarify the status of old names in the genus, and to describe a good number on new species, through a combination of morphological and molecular approaches and collaboration with citizen-scientists.

The Talk:  As humans reshape Earth's biodiversity, conservationists and the public worry about what will happen to animals and plants.  But what about fungi?  Mushrooms are also on the move, and movements are often mediated by commerce and trade.  Humans brought the fungus Amanita phalloides to California, and it is now invasive.  How did that happen and why is it spreading?