LAMS General Meeting

Online meeting using Zoom. The link is available if you say you are going.

If you're interested, there will be some mushroom identification chat starting at 6:30 p.m., but the regular meeting will start at 7:30 p.m.

Speaker: Tom Bruns, Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Program: "Complexity, Simplicity and Convergence – a tour through the evolutionary history of the Basidiomycota"

This talk will cover some of the classic examples of the evolutionary process as seen in the Basidiomycota. When evolutionary convergence is taught we usually hear about the wings of birds and bats, or fins of fish and dolphins, but the convergence in the Basidiomycota is equally impressive, with mushrooms, polypores, coral fungi, tooth fungi, and puffballs all providing stunning examples of convergence in form. In addition, the Basidiomycota has produced amazing examples of complex innovations including unique spore dispersal mechanisms, complicated mating systems, and host-alternating life cycles, and these complexities have been evolutionarily simplified multiple times.

More information about LAMS events is available on the Calendar (https://www.lamushrooms.org/calendar.html) page.