Our January meeting will feature this year’s Dave Largent Scholarship recipient, Monika Richardson. In keeping with this year’s accidental mycorrhizal theme kicked off by Jay Yeam in September, Monika will be presenting on her upcoming research project with the Henkle Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt “Ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with three Pinus species on the California North Coast”. The meeting will be held at the Humboldt Universalist Unitarian Fellowship (24 Fellowship Way, Bayside, CA). We'll have social time, show and tell (bring your mugs & mushrooms!), raffle, and merch sales from 7-7:30pm, then we'll discuss club business from 7:30 until about 7:45. After club business, we'll introduce our speaker.
Talk Description
Monika will discuss her master’s thesis project investigating the ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with three different pine species here in Humboldt and Mendocino, Pinus muricata, P. radiata, and P. contorta subsp contorta. To do this, she will collect fruiting bodies as voucher specimens and take soil samples from different pine forest stands to collect ectomycorrhizal root tips in the soil. These root tips, which are wrapped by the mycelium of the ectomycorrhizal fungi, will be cleaned and separated from the sample in order to extract the fungal DNA for amplification and sequencing. Through this genetic work, the fungi associated with each different species of pine will be revealed. The question she poses is “How similar are the EM fungal assemblages of different pine species here in Humboldt county?”
Speaker Bio
Monika grew up on the San Francisco Peninsula where she developed a deep love for the ecosystems of the coastal regions of California. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and has worked for various government and nonprofit conservation organizations, predominantly in the state. Most recently, Monika worked as an environmental planner for a fuels reduction project on Plumas National Forest, but having lived in Fort Bragg for a few years, she knew she was better suited to the north coast. After years of being obsessed with identifying and looking for mushrooms, Monika decided to say what the heck and go for a masters degree (the 9-5 world will do that to you). She is so excited to be studying something she finds so fascinating, fungi and their symbiotic relationships with plants, and feels happy to be in the beautiful, and wet, Humboldt county.
As always, our meetings are free and open to the public!
Join on Zoom (starting at 7:30pm)
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85768166565?pwd=hAupWNXgZ6Bwepd1NGKxax3LwmT15R.1
Meeting ID 857 6816 6565
Passcode 291239