Fungal Musings Beginning

Mycelium, symbioses and adventure

Being a mycologist is amazing. Fungi are these crazy organisms that defy every rule we try to assign to them. And they are Everywhere! In the soil, in the air, in the ocean, in our bodies, in plants, in other fungi!! Being everywhere, fungi have also adapted to a variety of roles, including pathogens, mutualists, saprotrophs, and the list goes on and on. A single fungus can actually switch between mutualist and pathogenic relationships depending upon the partner they are interacting with and the environmental conditions around them.

Despite the ubiquity and complexity of these organisms, they are understudied relative to other groups [animals, plants, even bacteria]. That's another reason why studying fungi is amazing - you get to travel the world studying them, asking new and exciting questions, or revisiting old ideas! My recent fungal travels have taken me far and wide, to Puerto Rico, Thailand, the British Isles and Costa Rica. But more on that later.

This blog will be primarily a place to muse about the many awesome characteristics of fungi, but in addition will be a place to ponder what it means to be a contemporary scientist, and will take readers on my many mycological and lichenological adventures!

This is an image of a Coenogonium species, a lichenized fungus associating with a green alga, in Puerto Rico. The orange dots are the apothecia [or fruiting bodies] of the lichenized fungus.