A friend of mine posted this on Facebook; an article about some orange goo washing up on a beach in Alaska. At first they thought it might have been microscopic eggs of things. Now they are saying that it's actually spores of a rust fungus. Rusts are notoriously difficult fungi to work with because, for one thing, they have up to five different spore stages, and another, they are biotrophic, meaning they require a living host to survive and reproduce. So if you don't have a living plant host, identification is especially difficult. This is indeed some very strange news!
Update: 8/19/11. Looks like I beat MSN to the punch! They're running the story on their front page today, though with few details. Believe me, I'll tell you what this thing turns out to be when I find out. If I may stand on my soapbox for one small minute, this is an excellent example of why scientific illiteracy is a significant problem in our world.
2 comments:
Don't know if this is the right place to try and contact you, but I couldn't find any contact information. Trying to find some information on what wild fungi might be available to find in/around Mobile, AL. If you aren't too busy to maybe drop me a line on a good resource, or just straight up tell me, my email address is dcmccall86@gmail.com
Thanks,
Chris
I apologize for the delay in getting back to your comment. Here's a link to some of my favorite mushroom ID resources. http://www.amazon.com/Resources-for-mushroom-ID-especially-geared-to-the-southeastern-US/lm/R1R5Y03Q40CHCA/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
I would especially recommend the first book in the list, "Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States" by Alan Bessette and others. There's a lot of good oak and pine habitat throughout our area, so you should be able to find lots of wild fungi out there. I've been finding lots of mushrooms around here recently, so it's a great time to be looking. If you have specific questions you can email me at alabamycologist at hotmail dot com as well.
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