Dear FunDiS Mycelia,
Please allow me to introduce to you our new eNewsletter platform: Substack. Our time with Mailchimp was great, but due to their recent change of requiring our small organization to subscribe with a paid plan, we made the switch to a more sympathetic and free(!) newsletter service.
We hope you’ll continue to enjoy and share our newsletters.
-FunDiS Director, Gabriela D’Elia
Consider Applying to be a FunDiS Board Member
FunDiS is expanding its Board of Directors and seeking new members with diverse perspectives and backgrounds to join our collaborative leadership team. We are seeking candidates for the Board of Directors who are strategic thinkers and community minded individuals with a passion for fungi and expertise in one or more of the following areas: business, nonprofit leadership, law/compliance, conservation, human resources, or donor cultivation/development. If you are interested please reach out to FunDiS Director, Gabriela D’Elia, at director@fundis.org.
CA FunDiS Collection Spotlight: Undescribed Cordyceps Species
In mid-January, California FunDiS Collector Mandy Hackney stumbled upon this super cool Cordyceps-like-thing in a small patch of grass adjacent to the parking lot at SOMA Camp in Sonoma, CA (iNat ID: 146638312). Luckily FunDiS Sequencing Lead Harte Singer was already running a sequencing workshop, so this Cordy-beast was thrown into the queue for DNA barcoding of the ITS region. Meanwhile FunDiS Communications Lead Mandie Quark snapped this photo for Instagram.
Interestingly, there was not a 100% match to this species in Genbank, meaning that it could be 'new' and has not been previously DNA barcoded. The closest match in Genbank was something called Cordyceps submilitaris from the Columbian Amazon. However, Connor Dooley on iNaturalist said this submilitaris sequence was from an unpublished paper and was misidentified. He proposed that the C. submilitaris is really Nigelia martinale (Clavicipitaceae), which is distantly related. So distantly related that the phylogenetic tree was destroyed when the Nigelia sequence was added. The next closest sequence matches at 96% with Cordyceps mexicana from Mexico.
The only thing we can say for sure right now is that the cool species Mandy found belongs somewhere in Cordycipitaceae, and seems to be a new or uncommon asexual morph according to expert Richard Tehan. He recommends barcoding more loci such as RPB1, RPB2, TEF, LSU, SSU to determine a more accurate phylogenetic placement. Interestingly, Richard collected a genetically identical Cordyceps in OR, but data is still forthcoming. Richard and Connor are planning to formally describe this species, and Connor says this asexual morph is “super unique.”
The culture is currently running on agar in Harte's lab if anyone is interested in working with this species further. FunDiS Collector Alan Rockefeller helped to create and explain the phylogenetic tree. Team work makes the myco dream work!!
Found by @jellybaby3000
Photographed by @mushroom_madman
Sequenced and cultured by @mycosomatic
Microscopy by @fishroom_man and @alan_rockefeller
Guidance on related species by @plethodon
Phylogenetic analysis by @alan_rockefeller
FunDiS in the News
2/15/23 FunDiS and CA FunDiS team members Christian Schwarz, Stu Pickell, and Bat Vardeh highlighted in National Geographic article.
”Even if you’re not in the middle of the supershroom, it’s always a good time to learn the thrills of mushroom hunting—and be part of remarkable citizen science efforts to understand and protect them, like the nationwide Fungal Diversity Survey, or FunDiS.”
2/17/23 FunDiS and Director Gabriela D’Elia featured in For the Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA) article.
“Species are undoubtedly going extinct faster than we can catalog and map them.”