| Work: | Coordinating the NSF-funded Macrofungi Collection Consortium and Microfungi Collection Consortium projects at the University of Michigan Herbarium, which has one of the largest holdings of dried fungal research collections in the United States. Our goal is to create digital records of all the collections of fungi that have been deposited in the herbarium and capture their associated data. The information is being made publicly accessible through an online database (http://mycoportal.org), allowing easy access to information tied to collections in the Michigan Herbarium (MICH). These projects are part of a large effort that includes most herbaria and museums throughout the United States that hold fungi, encompassing essentially all dried fungal specimens deposited in the United States in the past 150 years. The ecological and phenological questions that can be addressed once the database is complete are truly spectacular. |
| Personal: | Continuing efforts in the systematics of Cantharellus in North America. I am particularly interested in taxa occuring in the Midwestern United States and those in surrounding regions including the Middle, Eastern, and North-Eastern United States, as well as Canadian specimens from Ontario. Professional and citizen mycologists interested in providing specimens for research are encouraged to contact me. More information is available here. To date (March 2016) I've received over 250 specimens of Cantharellus and Craterellus. I have teamed up with Eric Walberg to utilize next-gen sequencing methods to produce a large dataset for these specimens. Eric has assembled and tested our primers and is getting ready to begin producing data! I sent him tissue samples from a small handful of specimens just a few weeks ago. Updates will be posted in the news section as they become available! |