Today on the Mushroom Hour we are honored to be joined by Dr. Andrew Wilson - Assistant Curator of Mycology in the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi at Denver Botanic Gardens. For Dr. Wilson the discovery of mycology began back in the late 90’s at San Francisco State University in taking classes from world renown mushroom taxonomist, Dr. Dennis Desjardin. Working with Dennis, Andrew earned a Masters degree studying the mushroom genus Gymnopus from Java and Bali. He later went on to earn a PhD in the lab of Dr. David Hibbett at Clark University. His project took him back to Southeast Asia, this time to study the ecology and evolution enigmatic puffball genus Calostoma and their relatives. In 2009, Andrew graduated and began a postdoc with Dr. Gregory Mueller at the Chicago Botanic Garden where he explored the systematic evolution of the Cantharellales and the model ectomycorrhizal mushroom genus Laccaria. He also did a one-year postdoc at Purdue University, in the lab of Dr. Cathie Aime, teasing apart the complex evolution of plant pathogenic rust fungi. At Denver Botanic Gardens, Dr. Wilson is working on a regional contribution to the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDiS) that encompasses the state of Colorado, with a focus on the Southern Rockies. In this effort he is training students on how to study biodiversity using natural history collection and DNA sequence analysis. He is also working on new tools in DNA sequencing to better sample and study fungal diversity.

TOPICS COVERED:

Formed in a Family of Biologists
Intellectual Explorations at San Francisco State University
Genus Gymnopus
Expeditions to Southeast Asia
What are Systematics?
Genus Calostoma
Role of Isotopes in Understanding Fungal Ecologies
Biogeographic Histories of Fungi
Interpreting Ancestry and Evolution in Phylogenetic Data
Gondwana Supercontinent
Finding a Living, Ancient Ancestor on the Lacarria Family Tree
Denver Botanic Gardens & Sam Mitchell Fungi Herbarium
New Methods of High-Throughput DNA Sequencing
Biodiversity & Evolutionary History of Southern Rocky Mountain Fungi

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Dr. Andrew Wilson - Denver Botanic Gardens: https://www.botanicgardens.org/team/profile/andrew-w-wilson-phd
Dr. Dennis Desjardin (Mentor): https://biology.sfsu.edu/faculty/desjardin
Dr. David Hibbet (Mentor): https://www2.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=355
Gymnopus (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnopus
Calostoma (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calostoma
Laccaria (Genus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laccaria
Calostoma cinnabarinum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calostoma_cinnabarinum
Colorado Mycological Society: https://cmsweb.org/
Colorado Mycoflora Project: https://coloradomycoflora.org/

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