Today on Mushroom Hour we have the distinct pleasure of being joined by Professor Tadashi Fukami – head of Stanford University’s Fukami Lab. Professor Fukami is an expert on community ecology and along with supporting his students and lab members, his primary interest is to understand historical contingency in community assembly. He is broadly interested in how species interact with one another in ecosystems and enjoys working with other lab members on the variety of projects that they bring to the lab. He earned his PhD at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with Jim Drake and Dan Simberloff. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research in New Zealand and Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa before joining the Stanford faculty in 2008. He sheds light on how communities assemble, even at microbe-sized ecologies, and has revealed amazing insights about fungal ecologies and interactions with other organisms that many of us have never even heard of.

TOPICS COVERED:

Embracing Nature Outside Tokyo
Coming to America
Fundamentals of Community Assembly
Historical Contingency in Community Assembly
Isolating Ecological Islands
Microbial Community Ecology
Rules of Community Assembly?
Understanding Community Assembly in Restoring Ecosystems
Flowers, Fallen Logs and the Human Body as Ecological Communities
Yeast Fungi Living in Flower Nectar
Monkeyflower Nectar Biome
Plant Pollinator Mutualistic Interactions
Applied Agricultural Uses of Understanding Nectar Microbiome
Metacommunities

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Prof Tadashi Fukami Staff Page: https://profiles.stanford.edu/tadashi-fukami
Fukami Lab Website: https://web.stanford.edu/~fukamit/
Prof. Tad Fukami Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tadashi-Fukami
Prof. James Drake Research: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/James-A-Drake-2044716847

Ep. 125: Community Assembly & Fungi that Live in Flower Nectar (feat. Prof. Tadashi Fukami)