Happy Mushroom Season, y’all! Come celebrate with MAWDC at our July Monthly  Meeting. Please note this is a week later than usual because of the holiday.

The meeting will be held via Zoom (link below). MAW President Elizabeth Hargrave will kick things off with updates on club activities and fungi in the news.   Foray Chair Mitch Fournet will lead the virtual ID table, highlighting recent fungal finds sent in by our members.  You can send your pics to Mitch at forays@mawdc.org.

For our short program, we welcome mycologist Prasanth Prakash Prabhu, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology at Clark University and recipient of a MAWDC Scholarship. He will be presenting his research in a talk titled, “The Current Understanding of Nematode-Trapping Mushrooms: Exploring the Sessile Sirens of the Fungal Kingdom.”

Our featured speaker for the evening is mycologist Matthew Meyer. Matthew will be speaking on “The Evolution and Ecology of Psilocybin in Nature,” which is also the title of his recently published paper.

Speaker Bios:

Prasanth Prakash Prabhu is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology, at Clark University. Before coming to Clark, he did his bachelor's and master's in Botany studying different aspects of Plant biology. His current project is focused on the “evolution of nematophagy in Pleurotacaeae.'' For this project, he is combining a wide range of techniques including cultural studies, metabolomics, comparative genomics, and transcriptomics to get a holistic view of the evolution of nematophagy in Pleurotaceae (Oyster mushroom and allies). In addition to research, he also serves as a mentor in the 2023 SPORES program working to create an inclusive environment to train next-generation mycologists.

Matthew Meyer is a PhD Candidate in the Slot Lab in the Department of Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on investigating how fungal-derived chemicals help fungi interact with other organisms in the environment.  Matthew's study system is psilocybin-producing mushrooms, leveraging the first university DEA license to legally grow these mushrooms for research.

Zoom Link: 

https://zoom.us/j/96693690911?pwd=YWdyeXh1bHF1N1UyNjNieFovNWFUZz09

Meeting ID 966 9369 0911

Passcode  330827

One Tap Mobile +13017158592,,96693690911#,,,,*330827# US (Washington DC)

Find your local Zoom access number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kQ9hr47WO