#36: Damon Tighe - Fungi, Mushrooms, and Community Science (Mycology)

Finally - a deep dive into the Fungi Kingdom thanks to Damon Tighe (instagram, iNaturalist)! Damon is a skilled naturalist, photographer, science communicator, and biotech educator. He has a biology and chemistry degree from Saint Mary’s college, and has years of professional experience in genomics and DNA sequencing, including with the Human Genome Project at the National Lab’s Joint Genome Institute.

Today, Damon describes the basics of fungi - what they are, and how they reproduce. Damon covers the three primary lifestyles that fungi take on - saprophytic, which like to eat dead stuff, parasitic, and mycorrhizal, where they team up with something else.

We discuss fungi and mushrooms that one might encounter, seasonality, how to read the landscape to find mushrooms, and how to identify them. Damon covers some common mushroom myths and whether it is OK to pick mushrooms for ID or general foraging.

He also tells us about some fascinating mushroom behaviors, such as how chicken of the woods fruit in anticipation of rain, and the story of the notorious Deathcap mushroom.

We wrap up with a discussion of DNA sequencing, which is achievable at home relatively inexpensively, and community scientists are driving new discoveries.

FULL SHOW NOTES - check for photos of species discussed today! The chanterelle is must-see!

Referenced Episodes
Magic of Lichens - Knudsen
Amazing World of Plant Galls - Kranz
Links
Entangled Life - Sheldrake
Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast - Siegel and Schwarz
Alan Rockefeller
Barcode the Lake at Lake Merritt
California Center for Natural History
How Many Fungal Spores Do We Breathe In? Source, Source2
SOMA Camp

Fungal DNA Barcoding Links
EverymanBio
Sigrid Jakob
Damon's overview of DNA sequencing
William Padilla-Brown - uses Oxford Nanopore sequencing

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

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