LAMS General Meeting

Speaker: Carolina Piña Páez, PhD

Program: “Truffles in the sky: A Fungal Tale of Climate and Chance”

What happens to fungi when forests migrate? As climate change reshapes ecosystems, fungi that depend on tree roots to survive—like the truffle-forming Rhizopogon—must move with their hosts or risk extinction. In this talk, we explore how these underground symbionts responded to ancient climate change using a natural laboratory: the Madrean Sky Islands. These isolated mountain ranges, rising above the Sonoran Desert, were once part of a continuous forest that fragmented as the climate warmed after the last Ice Age. We tracked the diversity of Rhizopogon across these islands and asked: What matters more in shaping fungal communities—tree species, geography, or chance? Join us for a journey through desert “seas” and forest “islands” to uncover how fungi, trees, and climate have shaped each other over time—and what that means for the future of forests.

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