LAMS General Meeting

Speaker: Arik Joukhajian

Program: “Fungal responses to wildfires”

Fire and fungi have long since been spoken of together, from oral traditions to 19th century publications on post-fire flushes of ascomycetes. Mycologists see the silver lining of the morel flush following a wildfire, but beyond foraging, wildfires have spurred great research on fungi in the post-fire environment. While some insights are only possible thanks to advancements in sequencing technology, there is still a ton to uncover using old-school methods that all of mycology is grounded in.
In this talk, Arik will cover how some fungi dominate after wildfires while others disappear. We discuss the main avenues for fire adaptation, mycorrhizal fungi in tree-less environment, whole community-level shifts, signs of gene-swapping among microbes, and fungal “body-snatchers.”
Following what is surely the worst decade of wildfires in California’s recorded history, phoenicoid fungi continue to emerge from the ashes to surprise mycologists. Tune in to learn some of the most surprising developments about pyrophilous fungi, both seen and unseen across a variety of environments.

More information about LAMS events, including a biography of the speaker, is available on the LAMS Calendar page.

Directions to the community center are on the LAMS Locations page.