A Last Excellent Day at MSA

Today was my last day at the MSA conference. There's still one more day left, but for a variety of reasons I have to get up early tomorrow and make the long drive back to Worcester. Not the least of these is the fact that a petty, bureaucratic,politically-motivated dean at Florida State University has taken it upon himself to put up a massive and ridiculous roadblock in the way of LL's quest for a PhD. I won't get into the details; she'll write about it when and if she's ready. All I'll say is that I've never heard of such a moronic, pig-headed thing being done to someone who has been one of the few bright lights for a department that is now being dissolved largely because of the incompetence of another pig-headed bureaucrat in academic clothing. With people like these deans at the helm, I would have to advise anyone considering a PhD program at Florida State to put it as low on their list of possibilities as they can possibly can. If it were a boat, it would have the word "Titanic" painted at the prow.

Other than learning of LL being screwed over yet again, though, today was the kind of day that makes me regret having to leave a day early. Two lablings gave excellent presentations on their research as did my advisor. I take a good deal of pride in being part of this group even if I haven't begun contributing as much as I hope to... soon.

I had lunch today with Joey Spatafora and my advisor and so had the chance to listen in and/or talk about everything from plans for AFTOL2 to Wall-E and The Fantastic Planet. I learned that Joey reads this blog when he recognized me upon our introduction as Mike O'Risal. So did one of the postdocs from his lab. In fact, no fewer than four people I met today already knew me by my nom d'blog. I had best be careful not to mention my rampant crack addiction and penchant for devouring live kittens here. Someone might be looking.

Today was also the day of the Karling Lecture, delivered by Nick Talbot of the University of Exeter. The topic was "Investigating the biology of plant infection by the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea using functional genomics." The rice blast fungus is a problem right up there with the potential of Puccinia graminis Ug99, wiping out up to 30% of the world's rice crops in any given year. Dr. Talbot's work on the mechanisms by which the fungus initiates and spreads infection seems to hold tremendous promise in addressing the problem. Some of the proteomics involved are well beyond the scope of my understanding; I'm not a proteins person by any stretch. Still, even I can grasp that if one can come to an understanding of how the subcellular mechanics of infection work, there's real hope of coming up with a solution.

After the Karling lecture, I met up with Meredith Blackwell and handed her three dead beetles. That might be perceived as an insult in some circles, but not in this one. I'll be sending some live specimens her way in the near future, too, and hopefully we'll be able to exchange some data and materials. I'm particularly looking forward to continued contact with the people I've met from her lab. Even though I don't think I'll be part of the next round of AFTOL research, others in my lab will be and her lab will also be involved, and we're all working on bugs and fungus in one way or another.

I had dinner at a little Indian place called Kaarma just around the corner from my hotel. I was joined by labling RiGa, Dan Durall from the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and Kentaro Hosaka from the National Museum of Nature and Science of Japan. It was a very nice cap to what has been an inspiring few days for me. If you should find yourself in State College, PA, I recommend checking out Kaarma.

I have indeed come away from this conference feeling inspired. I've got some new ideas and am itching to try them out, particularly when I get back from Florida laden with new specimens. Stephanie Gross and I talked today about there being a coleoptera/fungi symbiosis session at next year's MSA meeting. There are a bunch of us out there, and all we need to do is be in the same place at the same time with material to present. The place next year will be Snowbird in Utah and the time will be July 25-30, 2009. Now all I need is the material.

I'll get back to work on that on Thursday.

For now, my priorities are sleep and then the long drive back to Worcester. Sequences await.

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Amazing Mycological Fact

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Pigs' Ears from Pennsylvania: MSA Foray Finds

These are a few of the fungi I collected during yesterday's Mycological Society of America foray in Central Pennsylvania. It's only about half. Other people made some even more interesting finds. One lucky collector came up with a beautiful Sparassis crispa, but to me the most unusual specimen I saw in the lab was Amanita jacksonii, which I had thought to be an exclusively southern species. In fact, David Geiser mentioned that he's never seen one in Pennsylvania in the years he's been collecting here. I'd only seen the species in Florida previously, where it's fairly common (I've collected them on the Florida State University campus in the quad in front of the College of Business).

I came up with some Gomphus clavatus, which until yesterday I had seen only on the west coast. Perhaps certain basidiomycetes need a GPS even more than I do. They seem to be getting lost!

		First up is a particularly beautiful Amanita close to A. brunnescens. I'm not sure of the exact species, but people far more experienced than I advised that it's likely the best identification we'll get for this one without sequencing it and I'm unlikely to have time to do that in the near future. Whatever the exact species might be, though, the pellis is a particularly rich brown, the stipe does bruise slightly brown, and the mushroom has a faint odor of raw potato. The bulb is cleft, too, so it could well just be a particularly dark-pigmented A. brunnescens.
		This is admittedly not going to be a fungus that most people will gasp over in astonishment. Coltricia montagnei is much like the Coltricia cinnamomea I found at Wachusett almost two weeks ago, but the one you're seeing here is the largest Coltricia I've ever seen. This specimen was just over four inches in diameter, making it more of a fairy sofa than a fairy stool. When I first flipped it over to see if it was yet another of the endless Phellodon sp. that were everywhere in the woods, I thought it might be some deformed Suillus fruiting body... until I looked at its spores. A drop of KOH turned the surface black instantly, too.
		I believed that Gomphus clavatus, also known as the pig's ear chanterelle, was a western species, but here it is in Pennsylvania. These are young specimens. The more aged fruiting bodies nearby had lost all violet tones and looked a god deal more like pigs' ears than do the ones in this photo.
		All Doctor Who fans should appreciate this little ascomycete, Leotia viscosa, also called the green jelly baby. It's not quite as common as its pallid yellow sibling species, Leotia lubrica, but I think it's far more esthetically appealing.
		The polypore Phaeolus schweinitzii, on the other hand, is beloved only by certain slightly mad mycologists. Wrap your kitchen sponge in felt, soak it in water and give it a good squeeze and you'll know what this fungus feels like in one's hand. It readily incorporates bits of twigs, leaves, grass and anything else that gets in its way as the fruiting body expands, and despite its squishy consistency these beasts can get quite large. I found another specimen in addition to the one in this photo; my second collection was a foot in diameter. P. schweinitzii is not considered edible, but some people do extract dye from it, hence its common name of "dye polypore." Not even beetles seem tempted by this one, although I suppose I'll need to collect more of these spongy, oozy polypores before knowing whether that's always true. I didn't find any on yesterday's collections, though.

Among the fungi I found yesterday but don't show here are Cantharellus cibarius and C. ignicolor (too few to bother bringing home, though), a green-brown Hygrophorus with both stipe and cap covered with slippery slime, a very large Paxillus atrotomentosus that smelled quite spicy after landing on the dryer (it's not supposed to, but even I could smell this one!), a couple more Elaphocordyceps ophioglossoides, a proliferation of Geoglossum sp., numerous Spathularia, and probably a number of things I'm forgetting entirely. I also came up with Ganoderma tsuga, but I only wanted the Bolitotherus cornutus that were living in it. Elisabet, who had never seen it outside of a herbarium before, took the fruiting bodies for further study.

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Quick MSA Highlights from Yesterday

Yesterday's foray yielded lots of interesting specimens, some of which I've photographed. I don't have time to post the photos yet, but I'll get to it later today. My schedule is very, very full and the day's sessions start at 8:00 AM today. There's some good stuff early on that I really don't want to miss.

Having the opportunity to meet and talk with some of these people has been both enlightening and a great deal of fun. I finally got the chance to meet Tom Volk in person yesterday after having spoken to him quite a bit when I was trying to decide on a graduate program. My companions on much of yesterday's foray were Brandon Matheny (whose nose, despite having been moved recently to Tennessee, is as sharp as ever), Martin Ryberg and Elisabet Sjökvist. Elisabet is both a fellow polypore researcher and affable conversationalist; it was particularly enjoyable getting to know her as we oohed and aahed over everything from Gomphus to Paxillus.

I also spent a good deal of time with some current and former members of Meredith Blackwell's lab at LSU. While I'm researching beetles that live inside of fungi, Dr. Blackwell's lab working on fungi that live inside of beetles. Stephanie Gross, Maritza Abril, Sung-Oui Suh and I shot the breeze a bit at the foray and reception. I must say that Dr. Suh was remarkably dry for a man who had just driven all the way from South Korea. I may well take Stephanie up on her offer to collect tenebrionidae in her neck of the Gulf Coast so long as she's not wearing the belt made from passalid guts that's he's threatening to create. Insect innards may seem amusing for awhile, Stephanie, but wearing one's guts on the outside is a fashion faux pas of tremendous magnitude.

I also got to spend a good deal of time at the reception with Heather Hallen-Adams and Rod Tulloss talking about Amanita. Well, they talked and I mostly listened. I learned more about the genus while sitting at the table and picking at popcorn than I have a in all my time to date. One should always say nice things about Amanita specialists; they know things. Dangerous things. Luckily for those of us studying the benignly non-lethal polypores, that's an easy thing to do. Heather has particularly good taste in pets, by the way, being the caretaker of a very handsome panther chameleon (one should say nice things about Amanita experts' pets as well, you know).

More later. It's time for me to get ready to go to the AFTOL session.

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Finally in State College, PA

I really must keep in mind that drives to central Pennsylvania never take the 6 or 7 hours I think they will. I left Worcester at 10:30 AM and didn't get to my hotel until about 9:30. Traffic jams added a good deal of extra time.

I was considering having a drink down at the bar, but I don't even think I'm up for it. I have to be up early for tomorrow's foray; the bus departs from Penn State at 8 AM and as I don't know my way around I'll need to leave myself a bit of extra time.

I'm too road-weary to write anything coherent right now, but I am here. Thankfully, the hotel has given me a room right above a courtyard where students are drinking. I'm sure they'll lull me to sleep at any moment now.

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Off to Pennsylvania for MSA Meeting Today

I'll be hitting the road and Pennsylvania-bound in just a few hours for the Mycological Society of America conference at Penn State. My companion for the trip is a postdoc from the Pfister Lab at Harvard. Don Pfister is himself receiving an award from the MSA for excellence in teaching. Considering that the hapless postdoc will be trapped on the road with me for about seven hours, I fully expect some of that excellent knowledge to diffuse into my brainpan. In any case, I have to be careful around Harvard people. These ivy leaguers are a rowdy bunch.

The conference program looks excellent, with lots of interesting talks and posters. David Geiser is writing an unofficial conference blog. I'll be updating from the conference as well.

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