So much better than paying $$$ for crappy pasta.

So if you are a scientist hoping to fill a big hole, maybe stuff it with fungi.

😁

The BEST-> I was witnessing an entire field of science (multiple fields!) in its infancy. There is clearly a small but growing interest among scis and the public about mushrooms for physical and mental health, food, entertainment, and science. And a gaping hole of knowledge!

It seems that if you want to make new, big discoveries in the natural sciences, a good bet would be to study fungi and mushrooms. Then again, I wasn't getting "we are flush with cash" vibes from the mycologists, so if your aim is to drive a fancy car, maybe think twice. But things do change...

And while elephants and a type of mushroom called the Russula both evolved ~60 million years ago, the elephant has three known species, while a conservative estimate pegs potential Russula species at around 1,000 (~750 are accepted). DOOD.

Based on estimated species diversity, there is about 1 botanist for every 75 species of plants, but for every mycologist there are approx 8,333 species of fungi. (!)

Dr. Amy Honan @oregonstate.edu gave a (to me) mind blowing presentation (errors are all mine) on how understudied fungi are. They evolved at least 100 million years before plants, and are WAY more diverse than plants (but not as diverse as insects).

I learned how fast sequencing works (fascinating), how to use iNaturalist (easy to start, takes time to do well), and how to take good shroom pics (top, side, gills, bottom, scale, how it bleeds). I also learned that small, ugly, boring ones are most interesting to scis bc most people ignore them.

Yet fungi are EVERYWHERE. They are inside and outside of leaves, inside roots, in soil--even in you!

Tired: gut bacteria
Wired: gut fungi

Conservationists and conservation researchers often do not even consider fungi in their research, papers, statistics, and proposals.

It's like they are invisible even to the scientists who study the natural world.

That single event increased observations of fungi in the Olympic Peninsula by at least 15%.

Several of the mushrooms we found had no corresponding DNA sequence in the giant database they compared them to, but the scientists could not ID them as a new species because the DNA could correspond to a named mushroom that has not yet been sequenced. Frustrating!

During the event, I assisted in a civic science effort to collect, ID, and sequence fungi in the Olympic Peninsula. Over ~5 days, 66 people participated, made 1692 observations in iNaturalist, and IDed 379 species. Most of those were DNA sequenced. Our collections will be stored in the Burke Museum!

Fungi collections in many museums are deteriorating and need sequencing. Fast and cheap sequencing technologies exist, but because they are not as accurate at first try as much more $$$$ slower technologies, many curators have not agreed to take the small samples needed to verify DNA.

🫠

See? When NYer or Atlantic write 2000 words on this trend, I can feel smug for calling it first! :)

At home pasta making will be the sourdough bread of the tarriff economy.

I think those things may be up in the air!