LAMS: Los Angeles Mushroom Club Meeting with Berkeley Prof. Tom Bruns
Details
This is an online meeting of the "Mushroom Club" (LAMS or the Los Angeles Mycological Society, lamushrooms.org) on Zoom. Link available to attendees. And if interested, there's a mushroom identification discussion starting at 6:30 pm with the meeting starting at 7:30 pm.
EXPERT: This month Professor Tom Bruns (UC Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology) presents.
PROGRAM: "Complexity, Simplicity, and Convergence – a tour through the evolutionary history of the Basidiomycota."
This talk covers some of the classic examples of the evolutionary process as seen in the mushroom Basidiomycota. When evolutionary convergence is taught, we usually hear about the wings of birds and bats, or the fins of fish and dolphins, but the convergence in the Basidiomycota is equally impressive, with mushrooms, polypores, coral fungi, tooth fungi, and puffballs.
Prof. Bruns provides stunning examples of convergence in form and the complex innovations, including unique spore dispersal mechanisms, complicated mating systems, and host-alternating life cycles this mushroom has produced. These complexities have been evolutionarily simplified multiple times.
MORE: http://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/2021/01/lams-meeting-mushrooms-prof-bruns.html