President’s Letter 1Review of “Ascomycete Fungi of North America” 6 by Lawrence MillmanWho Owns the ’Shrooms, by Susan Goldhor 8The Names They Are a-Changin’, by Carl de Boer 11Forays, by Susan Goldhor 17Who’s in a Name? XVII, by John Dawson 18 Mycology in the Media, by Marshall Deutsch 20Chinatown Foray Lunch Menu 22

June 2014 Volume 69 No. 2

President’s Leter

Dear Fellow Mycophiles,

Less than a year ago, Nik Money published an article (anotherarticle -- not the one I talked about in the last Bulletin) in Fungal Biology,the journal of the British Mycological Society, entitled: “Against thenaming of fungi.” This was greeted by a number of amateur mycologistswith a storm of fury, scorn and mockery. After all, if one has spent asignifcant fraction of one’s years and brain cells memorizing the namesof fungi, it’s infuriating to have some snoty limey professor telling youit’s useless -- right? Plus, what would we use instead?

Except that wasn’t exactly what Money was saying. What hewas saying was even more revolutionary. At a time when researchersare announcing that DNA analysis has allowed them to identify(literally) millions of species of fungi inside plant cells, in soilecosystems, etc. and to reclassify fungi we thought we knew, andsuggesting that we are now on the cusp of really understanding andcounting fungal species, Money is saying that we might be beter ofsimply giving up the concept of species for fungal classifcation -- at leastfor now.

Think about that. Giving up the concept of species for an entirekingdom! It’s true that the fungal kingdom has up until now laboredunder a bizarre but historically understandable exception to thesystematic rules applying to all other organisms: Fungi have often(although not always, since nothing about fungi is clear and simple) hadtwo totally diferent names. And I don’t mean genus and species: Imean that one fungus might be given names that put it into two quitediferent genera, with a diferent species name for each of those genera.The reason for this is straightforward; Linnaean systematics dependedon morphology and many of the fungi we know and love have twototally diferent morphologies: one for their sexual teleomorph and onefor the asexual anamorph. And, as others (including Betsey Dyer in herrecent talk) have pointed out, almost all of the names we’ve memorizedhave been for short-lived sexual phases. It’s as if the Museum ofComparative Zoology had only the ovaries and testicles of animalscarefully preserved in all those jars. Well, of course, the sexual phase is

all we see. But now that DNA and RNA can be routinely analyzed, wecan begin to pair the sex organs up with their asexual phases.

This led to a remarkable occurrence at the nomenclature sessionof the 2011 International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, Australiawhen a dozen or so mycologists (outnumbered about 20 to 1 bybotanists, since fungal nomenclature is still in the dark ages in more thanone way) demanded formally that there should be only one name for onefungus. Expecting a tremendous fght, because of the internal batlesthat had held the mycology community hostage for years, Scot Redhead,described by Science News as “the batle-weary secretary of thedeadlocked commitee,” had prepared three increasingly mild optionsfor changing the two-name rule. Figuring that he’d start by puting up astraw man to be knocked down, he proposed the most radical optionfrst: simply remove the double name option from the Code that governsbiological names by deleting Article 59, which allows Basidiomycetesand Ascomycetes to have dual names. As Lorelei Norvell said, “Here weare, braced for discussion, braced for a fght, and they take a vote on thefrst option — delete 59 — and it passes. We just sat there looking likefsh with our mouths open.”

This doesn’t mean that all mycologists greeted the new rule (orlack thereof) with joy, but it was a huge step forward. But -- let’s keep inmind that it applied only to the relatively limited number of fungi thatproduce the macroscopic fruiting bodies we see. It doesn’t cover allthose endophytes, VAMs [vesicular arbuscular mycorhizal fungi], andtotal unknowns identifed only by a few hundred base pairs of the ITSregion of the ribosomal RNA cistron.

We insert here a few defnitions. Feel free to skip this paragraphif the last sentence made you feel dizzy or nauseated. OK -- ready?Basically, a cistron is a gene (i.e., a sequence of nucleic acids that codesfor a specifc protein), and a ribosome is a complicated RNA-proteinorganelle which takes the RNA message from the gene and does thework of turning that message into a protein. DNA [aka the code of life;the genome, etc.] and RNA, the messenger that gets sent out to do thework, are just long chains of four diferent chemicals. Think of it as analphabet with only four leters. But if your words are long enough, youcan fll up an entire dictionary using four leters. When Nik Money talks

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about base pairs, he’s referring to the order of those four leters in thepart of the DNA or RNA chosen to sequence. And, as for ITS, thatstands for Internal Transcribed Spacer. This is nonfunctional RNA thatseparates the parts of the RNA that actually do something from eachother. Because it exists in so many copies, it’s easy to extract from almostany litle bit of genetic material, and (here comes the important part)because it’s nonfunctional (as far as we know), there’s no reason fornatural selection to protect it from mutation. This allows it to be highlyvariable and this makes it a great candidate to sequence in order todiferentiate one fungus from another. The classic paper on how the ITSregion was chosen as a “universal DNA barcode” for fungi is by Schochet al. (the last author is the “Fungal Barcoding Consortium”), and itappeared in 2011, which was clearly a banner year in the somewhatcheckered history of fungal systematics. It’s available online at:htp://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/29/1117018109.full.pdf+html.The authors checked all regions with potential, and concluded that,“Among the regions of the ribosomal cistron, the internal transcribedspacer (ITS) region has the highest probability of successful identifcationfor the broadest range of fungi, with the most clearly defned barcodegap between inter- and intraspecifc variation.”

Okay. You jargon-phobic types can start reading again. Back toNik Money’s infammatory paper. What Nik says (among other things)is that in many cases, the methods that mycologists use to discover newspecies are still morphological. He points out that “fungi are well knownfor their developmental plasticity. The morphology of a colony growingon a leaf or an agar surface is a snapshot of an organism at a particularstage of development. The organization of mycelia and the shapes andsizes of spores are modifed by temperature, water and nutrientavailability, acidity, and other environmental variables. . . . This meansthat mycologists employ a lot of subjectivity in determining whichfeatures of phenotype are the ones that segregate species. And, theappendage of the ITS data to a species description does not help matersbecause we have no objective criteria for deciding how much sequencevariation to expect between fungal species. ITS sequence is a valuabletool for studying phylogenetic relationships between diferent taxa but,often, says litle about the individuality of species. The basis for claimingthat barcode A is associated with a diferent species of fungus frombarcode B is morphology. An initiative that allows authors to registernames for new fungi without providing a Latin binomial makes a lot of

sense, but does not resolve the essential quandary.” In a nutshell, Moneythinks that we can probably use ITS sequences to diferentiate generaand higher categories of relationships, but not species. He suggests that,until we get beter at it, we should simply stop giving Latin names tofungal species and accept the fact that we really don’t understand howmany fungal species there are, or even what constitutes a fungal species.

You know what? I have a feeling that he’s right. It’s not that ITSsequences won’t defne any species, but that they can’t be counted on asa defnition of all species. In fact, the species concept has never workedwell with fungi. It’s been terrifc for plants and even beter for animals,and those are what Linneaus was really looking at. He never understoodfungi at all. But maybe we don’t either. The fact that -- even for thesmall subsection of fungi that we recognize and read about (say, morels)-- the experts are constantly arguing about species might be a hint thatMoney is not just a trouble maker. He’s saying something that is as closeto heresy as we have in biology, but does that mean that orthodoxy isalways correct, and heresy always wrong? Think of Kepler. Think ofGalileo. Think of Darwin.

And, Nik has special relevance for those racing to do bioblites,global listings, etc. in the face of climate change, and life and extinctionin the anthropozoic era. Here is his closing paragraph: “If mycologistsembraced the facts of nomenclatural uncertainty, perhaps we couldbegin to resist the vanity of giving names to all the world’s mushrooms,moulds and yeasts. Experimental investigations on fungi wouldcontinue unabated and studies on diversity would rely upondocumentation of genetic as well as phenotypic variability without theencumbrance of afxing Latin names or digital codes to imaginary‘species’. Beyond mycology, calls for identifying and naming allorganisms have become widespread among conservation biologists. Theegotism and futility of these costly initiatives is quite mind-boggling asthe human threat to biological diversity multiplies. Rather thancompeting with animal and plant taxonomists, mycologists should showpluck in asserting philosophical independence from the waning felds ofzoology and botany. By turning our atention towards experimentalquestions and away from cataloguing, mycologists may escape theshackles of Linnaean fundamentalism.”

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Mycologists of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose butyour chains! And, of course, the toting up of all those species. “Butwait”, you say. “How about us? How about those of us identifyingmushrooms, polypores and lichens? How do we share our knowledgeand train newcomers as to which are edible, which are poisonous, and soon? How about all that time we put into learning their names?” Well,interestingly, (and in contrast to the NAMA members who wrote inasking if they’d have to use code names or RNA sequences to identify amushroom in the feld), Money suggests that for those species of generalinterest, common names -- death cap, destroying angel, false morel -- doperfectly well. Here, however, is where I disagree with Nik. Thosenames are fne, as long as you never leave your Anglophone homeland.But the minute you cross a border or talk to a visitor who speaks adiferent language, they’re useless. So let’s keep the Latin names for allthose species we know and love. Or all those pseudo-species. Whatever.For our purposes, those names do fne. But it’s always interesting toknow what the heretics are thinking.

Have a great summer collecting all those barcodes!

Susan

PS If you want to read Nik’s article yourself, you can access it online at:

htp://tinyurl.com/lj96ggr

If you’d like to read the article about the history of fungal nomenclature and how it moved from dual names to one name, it’s at:

htps://www.sciencenews.org/article/name-fungus

Ascomycete Fungi Of North AmericaA Mushroom Reference Guide by Michael Beug, Alan Bessete, and Arleen Bessete. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. 472 pages. ISBN978-0-292-75452-2. $85 hardcover.

reviewed byLawrence Millman

If you look at any mushroom guidebook, you'll fnd vastly fewerascomycetes than basidiomycetes, athough the former are the mostnumerous of all fungi. Perhaps mycophiles are prejudiced in favor offulsomely feshy species? Perhaps they're genetically disposed towardspecies that exhibit some version of a classic mushroom shape? Orperhaps no one ever told them that there are fascinating alternatives tothat shape? Thus I found myself eagerly anticipating Ascomycete Fungiof North America despite the obvious redundancy of its title -- are thereany ascomycetes that aren't fungi?

I've now had the opportunity to study the book. The speciesdescriptions are precise, easy-to-follow, and usually well-writen. Especially precise are the data listed under "Occurrence." For example,if you're investigating Pseudoplectania nigrella, you'll fnd that it can befound "scatered or in groups on moss-covered decaying conifer wood..." Likewise, the authors invariably include species synonyms, a fact that'squite helpful in an age when names seem to change with the drop of aproverbial hat.

But the book is largely photograph-driven, and here we get intosome problems. Many of the photographs illustrate species that havenever before appeared in photographic guise. Alas, many of themshould have not appeared in photographic guise here. Is the image ofScorias spongiosa actually a fungus or perhaps an ancient shred ofstyrofoam? The image of Apiosporina morbosa is so ill-defned that itcould be almost any blackish fungal entity. The image of Lasiosphaeriaspermoides looks like ink from a leaky fountain pen...maybe it is. Here Imight add that some of the photographs illustrate the wrong species. Examples: Pachyella babingtonii, several of the Pezizas, etc.

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A perhaps more serious problem is the absence of scale toaccompany the photographs. Thus a person looking at the image ofRosellinia subiculata might think it's roughly the same size as a matureHypoxylon, while it's only a fraction of that size.

The organization of the books has problems, too. Diatrypaceae,a very large family of Xylariales, is omited from the book without theauthors explaining why. Speaking of "why," why has a whole newgenus, Midotus, been created for Ionomidotus irregularis? You won't fndthis genus anywhere -- not even in a Google -- except in this book. Toadd insult to injury, Midotus is placed among the operculatediscomycetes when it's an inoperculate disco. And why have all theGlossums (Trichoglossum, Geoglossum, Microglossum) been bunchedtogether when recent DNA work has placed them rather far apart?

Thus I would recommend Ascomycete Fungi of North Americawith caution. But I would still recommend it. After all, it's the onlyshow in town -- the only ascomycete guidebook (not, as the titleproclaims, "reference guide") for the general mycophile. But I'll keep myfngers crossed that a second edition corrects some of the issues thatmake the frst edition such a frequently frustrating enterprise.

Who Owns The ‘Shrooms?

Susan Goldhor

Put it down to my having arrived at mycology late in life. Ormaybe it’s because I’ve been a solitary collector until recently. On theother hand, it could be due to my having pot-hunted mostly on trailsthat don’t see a lot of use. And then again, maybe I’m just dense.Whatever it is, it’s only recently that I’ve become aware of the tendencyof my fellow mushroom hunters to believe (and we’re talking pretydeep level belief here) that they own or somehow have a right to certain‘shrooms.

I frst heard it from Ken, who makes his living selling the things.He claimed that someone had stolen his Hen of the Woods that he’d leftto grow larger. Stolen? His? Pardon me? Is this like a fshermancussing out the guy who catches the cod he let go last year because it wasundersized? Then my pal Larry did the same thing. There we were,collecting on Concord conservation land, not too far from Walden Pond,and Larry was not happy because someone had come in since he was lastthere and taken his mushrooms. Another pal, Sarah, chimed in that shehad had her eye on some nice litle Hens but someone had taken thembefore she judged them mature. But Sarah didn’t say they were hers. (Isthis a male/female thing?) Meanwhile, we were trawling the woods in ano-mushroom-left-behind foray, taking every edible for miles, includingsome delicious young sulphur shelfs that some poor clod had probablyleft to grow larger.

And then Larry introduced me to a further rif on this subject.He announced that his mushrooms had been stolen by Russians. Thissounded to me like something left over from the Cold War. “How doyou know?”, I asked him. “Because they took all the boletes and all theRussulas. And they left the Entolomas and the Sulphureus. That’s whatRussians do.” I liked this idea – the concept of a mushroom detective. A‘shrooming Sherlock. This person could ID not only the fungi (by theircrumbs and stumps) but their takers. Ethnicity alone would not beenough. A really good FI (Fungal Investigator) would be able to pin

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down the individual. “Aha! look at how this stem has been cut! This isthe work of Boris; I recognize the nick in his knife blade!”

The problem is, once we knew who took it, what could we doabout it? Could we confront Boris and demand our Russulas back?(They’d probably be eaten by that time anyway.) Could we sue fordamages? Or mental cruelty? Of course not. We’re all collecting of thesame public land. And, for those of us who live in megalopolitansprawl, there’s a lot of foot trafc on anything resembling a trail throughthe woods.

Thoreau thought that he was living in an era when wildernesswas being destroyed. In fact, he was. But he was able to get away fromcivilization and its discontents by moving two miles out of Concord toWalden Pond. By 1935 as many as 25,000 people a day were visitingWalden Pond. Forty years later, when DEM took over management,they put a limit on the number of people visiting (I suppose to maintainour sense of solitude and wilderness). The number they chose was 1,000at any one time. Since folks cycle in and out, the number of annualvisitors is actually about half a million; most during prime mushroomingseason. And mind you, Walden Pond Reservation is no Yosemite. It’stiny. So – taking all of this into consideration – I have two suggestions.

The frst is that I suppose we should be thankful that we get anymushrooms. When I think about the number of people trampingthrough the woods hereabouts, I can’t believe that I flled my basket asfull as I did, or that we got eight species of edibles. It’s true that wedidn’t get many of most of those species. It’s true that only four of thosespecies were choice. It’s true that I live in constant envy of thosemycophiles in the Pacifc Northwest who get giant baskets ofchanterelles or those in Michigan who get hundreds of morels. I also livein envy of people who are Olympic skiers or Nobel laureates. Big deal.If, as I learned in high school, the primary characteristic of protoplasm isirritability, the primary characteristic of sentient life is probably envy.You know -- “I think, therefore I envy”?

The second is that when I examine the cause of our discontent,it’s really that there are too many mushroom collectors out there. (Infact, there are too many people out there, but that’s another issue.) Thereprobably was some pre-lapsarian time when the Iron Curtain held entire

nations of mycophiles at bay, and local collectors were few and farbetween. If you were lucky enough to be pot-hunting then, you reallycould wait for your Hens to grow without anxiety, and regard all fushesas yours. Those days are gone. But, fellow mycophiles, let me ask you atough question. Every mushroom club in America (probably in theworld) is working hard to create new collectors. We hold classes. Weinvite any and all to become members. We lead forays over our entireregion in our self-defeating atempt to show everyone every possiblecollecting area. We push mushrooming! What is wrong with us? Don’twe see the connection between the burgeoning of our memberships andthe emptiness of our baskets?

There is only one solution. Dissolve the clubs. Take themycosites of the Web. Compost the books (except for those we own, ofcourse). Or burn them, if you think that will add to the morel populationnext spring. Stop talking publically about the joys of ‘shrooming. Doyou realize that Larry – that same Larry who mourned thedisappearance of his mushrooms – told me that he was ofering a lectureon fungi and a walk in the very woods in which the disappearance hadoccurred? Doesn’t he see the cause and efect?

Friends, we must take our cue from the fungi we love so well. We mustgo underground. No more loose lips. No more club PR. No moreexhibiting at the garden show or holding mushroom fairs. No moreproselytizing everyone we meet in the woods. If you must talk aboutmushrooms, you might wish to discuss the variety of symptoms causedby the toxic ones. Liver transplants are always a good topic. Let’s bringback the fne old expression, “toadstool,” with all of its unsavoryconnotations. And for goodness sake, stop using those open basketswhere everyone can see what you’re doing. In short, no more self-destructive, masochistic behavior. A decade or more of this and the tidewill have turned. We will own the ‘shrooms!

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The Names They Are a-Changin’ A Primer

Carl de Boer Beginning about two decades ago, scientists started usingmolecular data to redefne taxonomic groupings; species seem to bebouncing from genus to genus. This has led to a general confusionamong amateur mycologists. Here, I briefy describe the motivation andbasis for these changes in hopes of increasing understanding of thisprocess. Taxonomic classifcation is the grouping of organisms into ahierarchy based on common organismal traits. For instance, Amanitamuscaria is contained within the genus Amanita, a group of mushroomsthat typically have an annulus, a volva, and a white spore print. Thegenus Amanita is contained within the order Agaricales, which containsmost of the gilled mushrooms (although not all — see below), includingCortinarius, Agaricus, Tricholoma, Marasmius, Hygrophorus, Pluteus,and many others. Higher still, is the phylum Basidiomycota, containingthe fungi that produce their spores on basidia, including the agarics,polypores, and jellies. Above that is the kingdom Fungi, the group oforganisms that all have cell walls made of chitin, which also contains theAscomycota (fungi with asci — sac fungi), and several other less-recognizable groups (e.g. chytrids, which include the species responsiblefor the global amphibian decline). This yields a hierarchy of groups,called clades, where at each level, all the organisms within that groupshare some set of traits defning the group. Long ago, people recognized that organisms naturally fell intohierarchies of similar organisms, but it was unclear exactly what theseclades represented. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selectiongave a natural interpretation of these hierarchies: each clade represents agroup of organisms with a common ancestor. For instance, the genusAmanita arose millions of years ago with the mushroom that is theancestor of all modern day Amanitas. Over the millennia, this singlespecies would diversify and diverge, giving way to varieties, like thosewe have for A. muscaria today (e.g. var. formosa), and these varietieswould eventually diverge to the point where they could no longerinterbreed, at which point we would call them species.

Reprinted, with permission, from the newsleter of the Mycology Society of Toronto

Fast forward to today, where we now have many distinctdescendants of the original Amanita, and it is these species that make upthe genus. By this process of divergence and speciation, repeatedmanifold over the millennia, we have our current complement oforganisms. We classify these by their evolutionary relationships into thetaxonomic ranks (e.g. genus, species, variety, family, order, etc.), where,in general, the further back in time the ancestor of the group lived, thehigher up the hierarchy the taxonomic group lies. However, our original taxonomic classifcation was based onobservable traits (macroscopic or microscopic) so we sometimes failed tocapture the true evolutionary relationships. For instance, it would beerroneous to group together winged animals1 (birds and bats) becausebirds and bats are only distantly related. The fact that these groups bothhave wings refects independent adaptations in the two groups, aprocess called convergent evolution. So just because we can grouporganisms based on shared traits does not mean that these traits refectthe true evolutionary relationship. Nowhere has this been a greaterproblem than with the fungi. Here, fungi that share a common,seemingly complex form (e.g. gilled, gasteroid, and polyporoid forms),are sometimes only distantly related; these forms were derivedindependently multiple times. Thus, our groupings based on thesefeatures do not refect the evolutionary truth. But how do we defne evolutionary truth? Until someone inventsa time machine, we are restricted to making observations in the presentday. A solution lies in DNA. DNA is how the blueprints for an organismare transferred from one generation to the next. Each spore ejected froma fruiting body contains a copy of the parent fungi’s genome: amolecular tie between the child and parent, encoded in DNA. However,copying of DNA from one generation to the next is not perfect; like astory told through the generations, the DNA sequence changes nearlyimperceptibly from parent to child, but over evolutionary time,mutations accumulate. These mutations lead to genetic diferencesbetween ancestor and descendant and also from one descendant toanother. We now have the technology to easily and cheaply sequence anorganism’s DNA and can then compare these sequences betweenorganisms to see how they are related. In general, the more closelyrelated two organisms, the fewer diferences in the DNA sequence weexpect to see between them because there have been fewer generationsseparating them.

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Figure 1: A sequence alignment (part of the 18S ribosomal gene) betweendiferent fungal species. Each row represents a diferent species and eachcolumn represents the bases in each species that correspond to theancestral sequence. Coloured columns indicate those where not all basesare the same, indicating a mutation has occurred in one or more of thespecies. Below are indicated three possible evolutionary historiesinferred from the indicated mutations.

***

Figure 2. A phylogenetic tree representing the evolutionary relationshipinferred from the complete set of mutations across the gene used for thealignment. Branch lengths indicate the evolutionary distance (generally,the number of mutations occurring on the branch). Numbers on thebranches indicate our confdence that the branch is correct.

For instance, Figure 1 shows a short sequence alignment ofseveral fungi. There are four diferent bases that make up DNA and werepresent these by four leters: A, T, G, and C. Figure 1 shows the part ofthe sequence for the same gene for diferent fungi, where thesesequences are aligned such that the each column represents the sameancestral position. At many of the positions in this sequence alignment,

the bases are identical between all seven species, indicating that thisregion is so important to the survival of these species that mutations aregenerally not tolerated and so are especially rare2. Because mutations arerare in general, it is unlikely for the exact same mutation to happenindependently in multiple organisms. This way, we can infer groupingsof organisms by dividing them into groups with a shared base. Inposition “A” in Figure 1, some of the fungi have a C and some have a T.There are two equally likely explanations for this fnding: either thecommon ancestor of these species had a C at this position and in onelineage it was mutated to a T, or the ancestor had a T and in one lineageit was mutated to a C. Although it is also possible that one organismmutated from C to T and back again, this explanation requires twounlikely events instead of one, and in general we favor the simplestexplanation. By combining the information contained in many diferentpositions3, we can infer the evolutionary history of these mutations toyield a tree representing speciation, where the leaves represent thespecies, and anywhere two branches meet represents the last commonancestor of the organisms on each branch (Figure 2). By considering agreater number of species and sequences, we can achieve more robustphylogenies. Changes in the DNA sequence do not happen in a vacuum;DNA is the genetic basis for organismal traits. For instance, there are oneor more genes controlling whether or not a mushroom stains blue. Insome cases, mutations may arise in one species that change the stainingreaction, and traits such as these we can use to diferentiate mushroomsin the feld. Historically, we did not have access to DNA sequences, sowe have had to group organisms by the traits they shared. What happenswhen these relationships are only coincidental? Enter mycology. It turnsout that fungi are exceptionally difcult to classify into evolutionarilyrelated groups on the basis of morphological features. Many of thegroupings we thought were good lump together distantly related fungi.For example, the genus Coprinus originally grouped togethermushrooms that deliquesced (their gills/caps dissolve). After sequencingthese organisms, we discovered that several distantly groups ofmushrooms independently evolved this trait, forcing us to divide thegroup into the four deliquescent groups we have now (Coprinus,Coprinellus, Coprinopsis, Parasola). One of the unfortunate consequences of mycology’s foray intomolecular phylogenetics is that the names for the species keep changing;

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what was Coprinus micaceus one day is Coprinellus micaceus the next!Should you be worried? Probably not. The name changes usually fallwithin one of these three scenarios:1) The species is good, but its placement is incorrect (as with theCoprinus example)2) The species is actually more than one species (as with the NorthAmerican “Morchella elata”)3) Several diferent species turn out to be a single species (the oldestname takes precedent) Scenario 3 is nothing new; species have often been described andnamed separately only to have someone later declare the namesredundant. In scenarios 1 and 3, only a brief confusion is likely to result:furious debates about a mushroom’s identity eventually leading to bothsides realizing they’re in agreement. For scenario 2, if there are traits thatcan be used to diferentiate the new species, then there’s no problem.Either you learn the new traits and move to the new names, or you lumpthem all together and stick with the old name. Often, there are no reliablemethods for determining which of the several possible species aspecimen may be (partly why they used to be considered a singlespecies) so identifcation down to the exact species can be challenging. Inthis case, our identifcation was equally ambiguous with the old name,but we were ignorant of our mistake. In this scenario, I would simplyrecord the specimen as the old name and if you’re really ambitious, add“sensu lato” (in the broad sense) to the end. If questioned on thisapproach, simply reply “I left my DNA sequencer at home.” The names of mushrooms are likely to continue evolving untilwe have built up a robust phylogeny. Even then, mycologists are likelyto continue arguing about where genus and species boundaries shouldbe drawn. Whether you choose to use the new names or the old names isultimately up to you, but as usage of the new names increases, so willusage of the old name decrease. You can, however, take comfort inknowing that the next generation of mycologists will be equallybemused when reading about “Lepista nuda,” “Coprinus atramentarius,”and “Rozites caperata.”

FURTHER READING For a more practical discussion on this topic and howreclassifcation works in practice, see D. Jean Lodge and Andrus Voitk,2014, The birth and fate of new generic names. Omphalina Vol. V, No. 1.For more information on DNA barcoding, see the correspondingWikipedia article.

1I actually mean vertebrates here, since I am excluding insects.2The 18S gene is commonly used in phylogenetics precisely because partsof it are very highly conserved (i.e. the DNA sequence is identical evenfor very distantly related species). This allows us to use the samemolecular “crosshairs” to sequence the same region for many species,making a cheap and easy approach. I will refrain from explaining detailsof the specifc molecular techniques since it could (and does) flltextbooks. If interested, see “FURTHER READING” on DNA barcoding.3Actually, position C in Figure 1 is not informative since all we can sayfrom a single diference is that one species is separated from the others,which we already knew. Consequentially, the more sequences we have,the more robust our results (for the same reason position B wouldbecome uninformative if we dropped Hericium americanum from thisalignment).

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ForaysSudan Goldhor

If you wanted, you could probably spend all summer and fallgoing from one foray to another. (If you read Eugenia Bone's terrifcbook, Mycophilia, you'll see that this is prety much what she did as away to learn about the feld & its followers.)

Many myco-newsleters and magazines list forays, but for practicalpurposes and non-subscribers, here's a suggestion. Go to the May-Juneissue of NAMA's The Mycophile. Dianna Smith has done a great job ofpulling together a solid list of forays (I can't copy them because it's a pdffle embedded in the entire newsleter) but NAMA generously allowsyou to access it online at:

htp://www.namyco.org/publications/index.html

In fact, you'll be able to access both The Mycophile and McIlvainea. (Once again, I suggest that you pay your dues to NAMA and get subscriptions and support our national organization.)

In addition to the forays listed by Dianna, I wanted to mentiontwo rather diferent ones. For beginners who want to learn more aboutNew England's fungi in a lighthearted way, the BMC's own LarryMillman has put together The White Mountain Fungal Foray, at TheWorld Fellowship Center in Albany, NH, September 19-21. With adistinguished faculty and a laid-back vibe, this foray (limited to 80people) is designed to "put the fun back in fungi." Contact Andrea Walsh<andrea@worldfellowship.org> for more info.

And, for those with a somewhat hallucinogenic take on theworld of 'shrooms, The Annual Telluride Festival is your baby. It'sAugust 14 - 17 in Telluride, CO and you can access info at: www.shroomfest.com.

WHO’S IN A NAME? XVII

Meripilus sumstinei

John Dawson

The black-staining polypore, Meripilus sumstinei, is named afterDavid Ross Sumstine (1870–1965), an educator, fellow of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science, and charter member of theMycological Society of America. Remarkably, Sumstine’s academicdegrees (a B.A. in 1890 from Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania.,M.S. in 1908 from the University of Pitsburgh, and D.Sc in 1910 fromGetysburg College) were all in theology or pedagogy rather thanscientifc disciplines, and his profession was that of a public schooladministrator. Yet his contributions to mycology were signifcant enoughto merit an obituary in Mycologia (vol. LVIII, no. 2, pp. 175–178, fromwhich the quotations, portrait of Sumstine and information about him inthis biographical vignete are taken).

Sumstine was born in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and spent hisentire career in that state. After an initial stint as teacher in a one-roomschool at Youngstown, PA, he served as principal of a succession ofschools in communities outside Pitsburgh, before moving to thatmetropolis in 1908. Three years later he became the frst principal ofPeabody High School there, and from 1926 until his retirement in 1939 heserved as Director of the Department of Curriculum Study and Researchfor the Pitsburgh Public Schools. He was also an ordained Lutheranminister who taught for some years at the Pitsburgh Lutheran TrainingSchool.

Sumstine frst became interested in fungi during his years ofpost-graduate study, and by 1900 he had begun to contribute some of thefungi that he collected and identifed to the Carnegie Museum —specimens that became “the nucleus of [that institution’s] mycologicalherbarium,” Eventually his contributions would number “well over10,000 specimens,” mostly collected within Pennsylvania, and inappreciation of his eforts on behalf of the herbarium he was successivelynamed Volunteer Assistant in the Section of Botany, Honorary Associateof the Carnegie Museum, and (in 1950) Honorary Curator of Fungi.

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Sumstine collected all types of feshy fungi, but he developed aparticular interest in the Hyphomycetes, on which he published twomemoirs in Mycologia, including descriptions of 18 new species. He wasalso the frst to describe the “stinky squid” stinkhorn, Pseudocolusschellenbergiae (well-known to members of the Eastern PennMushroomers, if not to those of NJMA), which he collected in 1916 butwhich was not found again in the Pitsburgh area until 1957. Hisobituary memoir lists a total of thirteen mycological publications by him,all in major journals.

As a person, Sumstine was described by his Carnegie Museumcolleague, L.K. Henry, as “a gracious, modest, [and] friendly man” whowas “a thorough-going scholar”— one “who listened well, talkedsparingly, ... was humble about his accomplishments” and was alwayswilling to help his colleagues with mycological issues.

Sumstine was married twice, frst to Estella McDowell, who borehim two children who died in infancy, and who herself died in the early1920s. He married his second wife, Grace Donges, in 1928, and sheremained his companion until her death in 1957. At about that same timefailing eyesight put an end to Sumstine’s mycological studies.Nevertheless, he reportedly “retained his keen intellect” until his deathat age 95.

Mycology in the Media

Marshall Deutsch

Readers who raise fruit fies in space (i.e. in minimalgravitational felds) should heed the warning in Science for 14 Februarythat this will inhibit their response to subsequent infection by the fungusBeauveria bassiana. Readers who enjoy huitlacoche (Ustilago maydis aliascorn smut) will be pleased to learn from Science for 21 February that thefungus produces anthocyanins (good for you) at the expense of lignins(indigestible) as it infects ears of corn. And readers with a generalinterest in mycology will also be interested in Science for 28 February,wherein we learn that a study of the fungi of boreal forest soils in Alaskasuggests that previous estimates of overall fungal diversity beingbetween 0.5 and 1.5 million species might have to be revised upward.This is based on globally extrapolating the revealed fungus:plant ratio of17:1 found in the Alaskan soil.

I’ve known for some time that the Pacifc yew tree is a source ofthe cancer-chemotherapy drug taxol, but learned that the drug wasproduced by a fungal endophyte only after reading an article by Gary A.Strobel in Natural History for March. He also tells, among other tales oftalented fungal endophytes, of how he found that ulmo twigs from Chilecontained Ascocoryne sarcoides, a fungus which produces a mixture ofhydrocarbons similar to diesel fuel. Less friendly to trees is, of courseCryphonectria parasitica, the fungus which killed more than three billionAmerican chestnut trees as described in detail in Scientifc American forMarch. On the other hand we fnd pro-fungal news in the Boston Globefor March 30, which describes how mushrooms can tastily elbow meatout of recipes for Sloppy Joes and an elegant pate.

The headline tells it all in The Boston Globe for April 11. “Fatalbat disease is now in half of US.” It refers, of course to white nosesyndrome. We think we know it, as infection by Geomyces destructans, butapparently the fungus is now named Pseudogymnoascus destructans. TheGlobe didn’t venture to supply either name.

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Science for 18 April reminds us again of the havoc being wreakedon amphibians by Batrachochyytrium dendobatridis, while an article oncaving in The New Yorker for April 21 tells how a caver “nearly died ofhistoplasmosis, a fungal infection acquired from the bat guano that linedthe upper reaches of a nearby cave. Sloths, on the other hand (foot?) areno sloths in holding on to diferent species of fungi in their fur.According to Scientifc American for April, “28 diferent fungal strainshave been identifed in their fur.”

Nature Conservancy for April/May describes an interestingfungivore. The mainstay of the diet of the West Virginia northern fyingsquirrel (not to be confused with its more common cousin the northernfying squirrel) is “trufes—or a close approximation from the genusElaphomyces. These trufe-like fungi grow below ground, entwined in theroots of trees.” The squirrels also eat lichens and above-ground fungi.

This column is so short because it covers fungal encounters inreading periodicals in English. A Russian counterpart would apparentlybe much longer, as suggested by the 6 references to fungi in a work offction in the New Yorker for May 12. These help to identify the locale asRussia. Here’s one of the references: “. . . and all the mushrooms from thelitle slippery Jacks to the ugly milkcaps.”

Chinatown Foray Lunch Menu

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Club Ofcers

President Susan Goldhor (617) 999-6351Vice President Scot Shafer (617) 646-3719Treasurer Joel Kershner (617) 566-4890Assistant Treasurer Marcelo Altamirano (951) 552-0979Recording Secretary Jason Karakehian (617) 254-7195 Corresponding Secretary Marcia Jacob (617) 471-1093Executive Commitee: Jeanne Peterson (617) 492-0595 Sarah Boardman (617) 242-9680 Ellen Penso (617) 332-8366 Membership Secretary Ivy Beach (310) 403-1749Walks Coordinator Doug Brown (978) 568-3629Librarian/Archivist Jason Karakehian (617) 254-7195 ID Commitee Chair Jeanne Peterson (978) 368-1846Scientifc Advisor Dr. Donald Pfster Farlow Herbarium and Library 22 Divinity Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138-2094Website Administrators Scot Shafer, Waldemar Swiercz

bostonfungiwebmaster@gmail.comWebsite Editor Andrea Ignatof

bmcwebsiteeditor@gmail.comBulletin Editor Marshall Deutsch (978) 443-8609 med41@aol.comBulletin Editor Emeritus Moselio Schaechter

elios179@gmail.com

For Information on Club Activities

htp://www.bostonmycologicalclub.orgbostonmycologicalclub@gmail.com

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