Bad news for Alabama's bats

For those unfamiliar with how calendars function, I haven't posted in over a year.   When I logged in I found there were 424 spam messages awaiting my moderation. 

I wasn't sure what could spur me to post again until yesterday when I looked at a Google News alert in my inbox with dismay.  Not surprise, but still with dismay.

White Nose Fungus (Geomyces destructans) has been found in Alabama.  It represents a significant threat to the Federally-listed endangered grey bat. 

Sad news for naturalists across the state.

Plug for Forever Wild

As a person who spends a lot of time outdoors, I think it necessary to put in a good word for the Forever Wild Program here in Alabama. From what I've been told, the program acquires land using monies collected from state oil and gas leases (not taxes), which are then managed by the state for the use of all Alabamians, including hunters and fisherman as well as birdwatchers, tree huggers, and fungal foragers like myself.

Zora Neale Hurston, author, secret Alabamian, zombie hunter; PvZ

I apologize for the hiatus.  Actually, there have been lots of mushrooms coming up gangbusters all over, with the passing rainstorms we've been getting, and I've been meaning to post pictures and comments.  So what shook me out of my quiescent period?  It was this YouTube video I stumbled upon, an interview with the author Zora Neale Hurston about her experiences with zombies (yes, real zombies from Haiti).  Though she claimed to be from Florida, Ms. Hurston was actually from just down the road in Notasulga, Alabama.

On rather tangentially related topic, I've become quite enamored of the video game Plants vs. Zombies, which features both zombies (not the real but the fictionalized type) and mushrooms! I know I'm rather late to the party with this.  The designers are quite creative in ascribing zombie-killing powers to an array of plants and mushrooms. In the iPhone version, you can cultivate a Zen garden, including a special section just for your mushrooms.  And it's got a catchy theme song you can hear when you defeat the game.

Happy Birthday to a prominent Alabamian?

Today would have been the 97th Birthday of jazz artist Sun Ra, who first appeared on Earth in Birmingham,AL on this day in 1914 with the name of Herman Poole Blount.  After an experience where he claimed a passage to the planet Saturn, he later legally changed his name to Le Sony'r Ra, and lived in the persona of an intergalactic traveller. 

Sun Ra was a pioneering musician even within the highly creative medium of jazz.  His song titles and lyrics often feature clever word play and focus on the themes of space travel, the empowerment of African Americans, and Egyptology.  His band, the Arkestra,continues to play today, and contains the forward and reverse of his adopted surname (RA), as well as supporting the idea that his intergalactic travels were like those on a great Ark such as Noah's, or that the entire Earth exists as just such an Ark. 

I'm okay, lots of other Alabamians are not.

While I tend to focus more on fungi than the state where I live and blog, we've just faced a terrible tragedy here in Alabama.  Myself and the area immediately around me were spared, but there are many people in Alabama who were not so fortunate.  Please consider those impacted by the tornadoes, and give whatever you can to help.

Thank you.

Mobile Leprechaun Remix

Happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all!

Busy busy busy

A nice little Pluteus cervinus on an old rotten log

It's been raining, so I've been out hunting mushrooms.  As I mentioned previously, I went out on the Tuskegee National Forest with some of my students, out on the Bartram Trail (or Bertram Trail, if you believe the sign, which you shouldn't).  That was a couple of weeks ago, now, and already I've been at it again.  Last week I gave a talk to my new friends in the East Alabama Orchid Society about mycorrhizal fungi and orchids (a very cool story I'll elaborate on later, I promise).  Earlier this week I gave a talk to my daughter's kindergarten class about mushrooms, and this morning I went out to the Alabama Nature Center in Millbrook, AL to talk to some of their nature educators about identifying mushrooms and other macrofungi.  They do have a beautiful site out there, so I'll be sure to head back, and I suggest you do too.  After me flapping my lips for close to two hours, we got to go looking for some mushrooms.  Even though it had only rained yesterday (and some last week) we saw some neat stuff out there: Cortinarius (pictured, species?  not sure I even want to go there), Hygrocybe chlorophana (I called it Hygrophorus, which it used to be, same family, still a waxy cap, nice yellow thing) Hypholoma fasciculare (sulfur tuft, formerly known as Naematoloma), and lots of polypores and what-not.  It looks like we're getting more rain, which is good news!  And to top it off, I just got a copy of Taylor Lockwood's Mushroom Identification Trilogy in the mail.   I'll let you know what I think of it by and by.  Good times!

Cortinarius sp., with fresh cortina!

George Washington Carver Museum

Bust of George Washington Carver outside the museum

 Yesterday my daughter's second grade class went on a field trip to the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site just a bit down the road from here.  Even though I had a field trip of my own to contend with in the afternoon (keep posted, details after the second trip today), I had to go for at least part of the trip, as George Washington Carver is a hero of mine.

Peephole into pictures of mushroom!

 I was pleasantly surprised to find a lovely display of mushrooms and other fungi displayed prominently near the entrance.  Fungi were one of Dr. Carver's many interests, and his Master's of Agriculture from what is now Iowa State University was in Plant Pathology.

Another peephole

Ascomycetes

 I especially appreciate that the macrofungi were separated into their proper divisions,

Basidiomycetes

 And I also liked this illustration of a powdery mildew cleistothecium.  As well as being a botanist, agricultural chemist, philanthropist (within his means), and inventor, he was also something of an artist. 

One of Dr. Carver's illustrations of a powdery mildew ascoma.

  I didn't remember the fungal display from my last visit, which was many years ago, but it just reinforced my fondness for this great man. 

Another fungi in Alabama story

While waiting for the white nose fungus to come flying in from the north, Alabama has been hit by another newsworthy fungus in the south. This one has been around for a while, but is approaching epidemic proportions in the marshes near Mobile and adjacent Mississippi. Claviceps purpurea, which is better known as ergot, affects many grasses, and was the original source of lysergic acid, a precursor of LSD. Now it is hitting Spartina alternifolia, one of the two main grass species in the area.

The fungus doesn't kill the plants though it does render them sterile, which in an evolutionary context is just as bad. Many questions remain unanswered. For example, was the Gulf oil spill an important predisposing factor? Also, is it from the G3 group, considered a different variety of the fungus, which seems to affect Spartina more frequently than other grasses? Probably so, which would be good seeing as the G1 and G2 groups affect some of our economically important grasses. Clearly, this story is developing, and it is far to early to consider what the impact is or may become.

More Alabama fungus news!

Probably my favorite Alabama brewery, Good People Brewing Company, has announced they are brewing a batch of IPA using a different type of yeast, Brettanomyces. This yeast (which I admit I'd never heard of before) is a bit different from good ol' Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in that it has been frequently construed as a contaminant, but is used in some instances for brewing as it produced different sensory compounds. We'll see how it turns out!

Alabamians gone viral again

This was in Huntsville!


While I feel for the poor lady who was the victim of the attack, her brother is quite charismatic, especially under the influence of Auto-tune.

The End of History

This has been in the news quite a bit recently as an "odd story". The Brew Dog Brewery in Scotland has produced the strongest beer in the world, The End of History. At a whopping 55% alcohol by volume (ABV), I (and others) ask, how is that even possible?

Beer and wine are produced by fermenting their feedstocks, or incubating the ingredients with yeast, which consumes the sugars and converts them to ethanol under anaerobic conditions. Alcohol (specifically ethyl alcohol), is a poison which kills slowly, the old saw goes, though more quickly in the case of yeasts. Most beer yeasts max out at 5-7% ABV, with yeasts used in Belgian strains tolerating 12%. Even so, no yeast can survive and prosper at these higher proportions of alcohol. So the brewers engaged in what some brewing purists have claimed is foul play, freeze distillation. Because water has a higher freezing point than water (which is why the vodka in your freezer remains a liquid), if you freeze the beer and remove the ice crystals, the remaining liquid is enriched in alcohol and the other flavorants. In the case of End of History, that includes juniper berries and highland nettles.

Only 11 bottles have been produced, each within a taxidermied roadkill squirrel or stoat. The price tag is not a trivial matter. Depending on whether you want a stoat or a squirrel, the bottles were 500 or 700 pounds, though now they are sold out. BrewDog still has inventory of their other ultrahigh gravity beers, including Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32% ABV and Sink The Bismarck, at 41% ABV. These ultrahigh gravity beers are still illegal in Alabama; the Gourmet Beer and Wine Law signed last year increased the accepted ABV content from 6% to only 13.9%. However, this has greatly expanded the inventory of my favorite local wine and beer merchant, Gus.

I don't usually weigh in on the football thang, but...

Now, I follow SEC football, being an alumnus of Auburn University, but I prefer to leave football talk to the approximately 1 million other sports blogs out there, as a case of nonoverlapping magisteria. They don't talk about fungi, and I usually don't talk about football, even though it is an integral part of the Alabama experience. But I found this too funny to pass up. A video game store in Tuscaloosa replaced the cover photo of tough Tim Tebow with an image of his more sensitive side, crying after losing the SEC Championship to 'Bama.

Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve

A good friend of mine from the AU Davis Arboretum invited me along on an Earth Day field trip up to the Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve, which is on land owned by Professor Jim Lacefield and his wife Faye. Prof. Lacefield is a geologist and author of the book "Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks", which is a fantastic reference for any student of Alabama's natural history.

Fossils! and a quarter for scale

The Preserve is in Colbert County, up in northwestern Alabama abutting Mississippi and Tennessee. They've got the biggest population of Alabama azalea (Rhododendron alabamense) in the state, as well as lots of other amazing flora.

The Alabama azalea in blooming glory

Azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, huckleberries, and many others are members of the Ericaceae, which is a family with its own sorts of mycorrhizas that are slightly different from typical ecto- or endo-mycorrhizas. Read the page from Penn State for more information.

Cypripedium parviflorum, a ladyslipper orchid.

All orchids are obligate mycotrophs, and all require nutrition from fungi at some point in their life cycle. Like the Monotropaceae (split off from the rest of the Ericaceae), some orchids lack chlorophyll throughout their lives and require nutrition from nearby photosynthesizing plants. That nutrition is mediated by fungi!

Pedicularis canadensis, Orobanchaceae

We also saw lots of the Canada lousewort pictured above. Louseworts are another hemiparasitic group of flowers, meaning they rely upon other plants. However, they do not require fungal mediation but produce their own haustoria with their roots.

As for the rest of the mycota, I didn't see a whole lot out there. Pretty much no mushrooms, but I did see a lot of mayapple rust. Mayapple is quite a common wildflower in the eastern US, and was flowering in great abundance yesterday. The distribution of the rust was very patchy, affecting single individuals here and there.

An uninfected mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum (Berberidaceae)

Mayapple rust is caused by Puccinia podophylli, and is an autecious rust, meaning it only requires one host. Compare this with apple-cedar rust, or cedar quince rust which are heteroecious. I *believe* it is also demicyclic (meaning it lacks a uredinial stage)

The upper (adaxial) leaf surface, note the discoloration and puckering

And the lower (abaxial) surface, with the characteristic aecial pustules.

As the host is not of much economical importance, not much research has been published on this rust for many years.

To sum up, not a great day for fungi, but a fantastic day for expanding my knowledge of Alabama's great flora and geological history.

Holy Cow, I can't believe I missed this...

I just learned from Mycorant that two of the three professors killed in the UAH shooting were fungal biologists (neither of whom have I met). Dr. Gopi Padila was one of the victims.. He specialized in fungal genomics, and was working on the sequence of the Laccaria bicolor genome.

Dr. Maria Ragland Davis was another victim. She also worked in fungal genomics, only in Botrytis cinerea, examining the secretome of the fungus with LC-MS (liquid chromatography/mass spectroscopy.

Dr. Adriel Johnson Sr., whose research was in the realm of cell biology and nutritional physiology was the the third victim.

My belated condolences to the families of all the victims.

Red bay wilt reported on Gulf Coast

It was only a matter of time before this little ambrosia beetle brought its deadly cargo with it to Alabama and the Gulf coast. The ambrosia beetle Xyleborus glabratus is an exotic species, as is the fungus it carries, Raffaelea lauricola. The two work together to infest and infect red bay trees, which kills them in alarming fashion akin to other exotic organisms such as those causing Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight. It had been previously found along the southern Atlantic coast, and now this.

Of Allergies and the Lives of the Indoor Molds

I moderated an actual comment about fungal allergens in Alabama. I get a few comments every now and then, but almost all of them are spam. I figure the few of you who may check in with me don't need to read any more ads for erection pills and other medications.

However, Shalleen asked an interesting question that I thought merited my research, even though it's a bit out of my wheelhouse.
Please note that I'm not trying to peddle medical advice. I am most certainly NOT a medical doctor. My perspective is that of a mycologist.

Allergies are extreme immune events which can be caused by breathing in of allergens. Pollen is a common allergy. I suffer from pollen allergies, which my father thought was ironic, given my training as a botanist. But overexposure to potential allergens can lead to increased sensitivity. I often tell people the worst part of having allergies and being a botanist is KNOWING what the pollen is trying to do to my nose.

Pollen is the source of the male gametes in seed-producing plants. Thus, pollen is analogous to sperm in animals. Produced in prodigious quantities, pollen requires a relatively small investment of energy, and each has a very low probability of fulfilling its purpose, fertilization of an ovule. Pollen is analogous to email spam or phishing in this way. Even though most of it is emitted without achieving its purpose, it is the rare hits that have a big payoff that make the investment of energy worth it.

Fungal spores are similar to pollen in that they are produced in great quantities with little chance for success at the individual level. How great a quantity? According to Bryce Kendrick's "The Fifth Kingdom", a single Ganoderma applanatum conk can release 30 BILLION spores A DAY!
Compare that with an estimate of 85 million sperm produced by a human male in a day, and you can see that spores are quite abundant in the air.

I should note, medical mycology is not for the faint of heart. The number of fungal pathogens of humans is relatively small relative to both the number of fungal species and to the number of biotic human pathogens (including viruses and bacteria). However, some of those few fungi that cause mycoses (singular: mycosis, inflammatory diseases caused by fungi) tend to disfigure people in grotesque ways. Google Image Search at your own risk.

As for Alabama specific allergenic fungi, I do not know of any such list. However, a paper was recently published in the eminent Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS) which examined the fungal community in dust samples from 76 locations throughout the world, in both temperate and tropical on six continents, and in several types of buildings. A Scientific American article discussing the paper can be found here. Using high throughput sequencing (454 sequencing) they were able to examine the fungal community in dust samples. Using PCR primers specific to fungi, the researchers were able to amplify fungal genes in the dust sample, including many that may not be have been revealed by simply culturing. The primers anneal to sites that (ideally) all fungi possess but non-fungi do not, and amplify regions that are more free to vary. Each unique variation of that gene in the large sample is a haplotype, which can then be compared to known sequences in GenBank and classified by their similarity to known values. By looking at the different haplotypes, researcher identify Operational Taxonomic Units, or OTUs. In some cases an OTU represents a known species, matching 100% completely with a GenBank sequence, but most sequences are only close matches, in which case they may come from undescribed species, or be different population of previously described species, or just something entirely new, in which case a best BLAST match can only be at the family level or above. Thus OTUs are the diversity units. Among the most interesting results are the relative diversity of fungal OTUs in the tropics compared to the temperate regions. In most living taxa (plants, animals, other fungi), diversity is greater in the tropics than in the temperate regions. In the case of the dust samples, there were more fungal OTUs in the temperate samples on either side of the tropics.

Also, they found greater similarity in fungal communities that were relatively clustered spatially than in similar construction. Thus a residential home was more likely to share OTUs with a nearby warehouse than a residential home further away. Thus, it is likely that Alabama does have a locally unique indoor mycota (list of fungal species), but that remains to be explored. Hopefully it's not much much too late for you, Shalleen.

On or about this data in Alabama fungal history...

George Washington Carver died. The 'Black Leonardo' is most famous for his work with peanuts, making darn near everything with them, he got his start at the institution which is now Iowa State University, where he earned his Master's degree, and worked in plant pathology and mycology. What did he do? I surely don't know. But given his status among the luminaries that Alabama may claim (having taught just down the road at Tuskegee Institute), I'd like to pay homage.

Another great Alabama local commercial

Another great local commercial.

Phyllotopsis nidulans

Just got out in the woods yesterday. Probably my last time at this site over near Tuscaloosa. I came upon these lovely orange babies on a snag.
They look superficially like oysters, but on pine? No, these are the orange mock oyster, Phyllotopsis nidulans. Astipitate (without a stipe or stalk), on wood, these ones didn't smell fetid to me though they are reported to be nasty smelling. The pileus is fluffy in appearance on the top.


I just recently discovered another mycoblog, Mycorant. They have a link to my blog (thanks!) and do have some of the same material (i.e. fungal news), but a lot more of it. Did they get the inspiration for the name from looking upon my blog? Maybe. I'd like to think that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I recommend checking it out.