VIRTUAL EVENTS
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For members only: Taxonomy Tuesday, a local virtual foray EVERY WEEK, on Tuesday evenings, and other club virtual learning opportunities. Members will be sent an email for virtual events with their Zoom link to join the meeting. This is an all year-round event. Basic Instructions can be found here. |
Online LECTURE SERIES for 2025
The 2025 Online Live Lectures have begun.
Most have recordings will be available to NJMA Members.
Most have recordings will be available to NJMA Members.
Only NJMA Members will be sent a link to attend online lectures. So be sure to renew your annual NJMA membership in January and not June. New lectures will be listed when their arrangements have been confirmed.
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Thursday February 20, 2025 7:30pm
19th-Century Field Fights: How The Rise of Popular Mycology Made Foraging White Madeline DeDe-Panken will discuss the rise of popular mycology in America at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on cultural clashes over what (and whose) knowledge was judged trustworthy for safe mushroom foraging. Echoing current mycophilia, beginning in the 1880s, the culinary, intellectual and personal benefits of mushroom hunting drew new populations to the field, revitalizing an ancient practice through popular science. These early mycophiles refashioned foraging into a science-minded middle-class pastime. Yet their approach stifled more traditional forms of knowledge, denigrating long-held customs among marginalized communities including indigenous groups and Italian and Eastern European immigrants. In the process, the competent forager became typified by whiteness and affluence, fueling exclusion in outdoor pursuits that we are still unraveling the impacts of today. Ultimately, this talk considers ideas about “correct” land use and foodways which continue to shape our relationship with the natural world and its offerings. |
Speaker: Madeline DeDe-Panken is a PhD Candidate in US History at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her research explores the rise of popular mycology at the turn of the twentieth century, particularly focusing on women's roles in foraging culture and public science. Madeline has held fellowships at institutions including the New York Botanical Garden and New-York Historical Society. She lives in Somerville, MA where she is a member of the Boston Mycological Club and works at The Mushroom Shop helping people take full advantage of culinary varieties.
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Thursday March 13, 2025 7:30pm
Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms Mary Elizabeth Banning (1822-1903) was one of the first American mycologists. She was a talented, self-taught scientist who studied mushrooms in Maryland in the mid-1800s. Banning was one of the first women to describe new species of fungi to science. Throughout her life, she produced scientific descriptions, beautiful illustrations, and rich narratives about her fungal encounters. On account of her gender, however, Banning’s work and talent went under appreciated in her lifetime, and her name was lost to obscurity for almost a century. This talk will celebrate her contribution to science and mycology through an exploration of her illustrations, taxonomic work, and story-telling, drawing from the collections at the New York State Museum. |
Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, and a professor of biology with Bard Prison Initiative. Her research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity and evolution, as well as queer theory and philosophy of science. Her forthcoming book (May 2025), Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, is a collection of essays challenging our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.
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Thursday March 27, 2025 7:30pm
Fungaria and the MycoPortal Fungaria are central to the study of fungi. They provide the physical evidence needed to describe a species morphologically; in many cases DNA sequences can be obtained from deposited material. The importance of depositing specimens in phylogenetic and genomic studies is essential. In this talk I will outline the general use and guidelines practiced in the administration of fungaria and how this relates to databases and Mycoportal in particular. Examples of how database information can enhance mycological studies. One can ask, how do you know if a particular fungus has been collected in a location before? Can one determine if a fungus is rare? How do we know if a particular collector could have been in the right place to have collected a particular sample? Each specimen tells a unique story. We will delve into some of those stories. |
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Don Pfister is Harvard’s Asa Gray Research Professor of Systematic Botany and Curator Emeritus of the Farlow Library and Herbarium/Fungarium. At Harvard he served in many roles including Faculty Dean at Kirkland House, Dean of the Harvard Summer School, Interim Dean of Harvard College and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. He has taught courses ranging from the biology of fungi to plants used by people to forests and climate change, while his research has focused on the classification and diversity of fungi, history of collections and collectors of biological materials. His field work has taken him to many regions around the world, most recently southern South America; Patagonia and espiciallyTierra del Fuego. He has also been the generous and greatly appreciated scientific sponsor of the Boston Mycological Club for as long as we can remember.
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Thursday April 24, 2025 7:30pm Mycorrhizal Fungi Supporting Forests of the Future
As human activity continues to pour CO2 into the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems are becoming increasingly important natural carbon sinks that help mitigate this atmospheric carbon accumulation. Currently, terrestrial ecosystems take up and sequester 1/3 of humans’ annual carbon emissions, but how long this so-called “CO2 Fertilization” effect will persist is highly uncertain. Plants’ continued ability to take up nutrients from the soil is critical for CO2 fertilization to occur, and their primary means of doing so in most ecosystems is through partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi. This talk will explore experimental evidence from both temperate and tropical forests on the increased role that belowground mycorrhizal partnerships will play in supporting nutrient acquisition, tree growth, and terrestrial carbon sequestration in a future CO2-enriched world. |
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Dr. Ben Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research focuses broadly on how terrestrial ecosystems respond to various aspects of global change and what those responses will mean for the future ability of those ecosystems to capture and store carbon. Specifically, work in the Taylor lab addresses how key partnerships between plant roots and soil microbes, such as mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, will impact how plants respond to increases in atmospheric CO2, temperature, drought, human land use, and other anthropogenically driven changes.
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Sunday May 4, 2025 11:00am
How Denmark is Monitoring and Mapping their Fungi The Danish Fungal Atlas, began in 2009 as a citizen science project bridging amateur and professional mycology in Denmark. The project has collected over 1.2 million records of fungi in Denmark, which have been widely used for both research and nature conservation planning. The project utilizes innovative tools for enhancing data quality and helping volunteers contribute, including unique data validation algorithms, AI based species identification tools and next generation sequencing. Lately several aspects of these efforts have been expanded to the European scale in the FunDive project, which currently connects citizen scientists and academics researchers across more than 20 countries in Europe. |
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Jacob Heilmann-Clausen has a PhD in forest ecology from University of Copenhagen, 2004, with a focus on community ecology and conservation of fungi growing on dead wood. He has considerable experience from practical nature management and now holds a position as Assoc. Professor at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Here he works in conservation, restoration ecology, biodiversity monitoring, and fungal macroecology.
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Thursday, May 8, 2025 7:30 pm
The Hidden Life Inside Trees Trees are more than just plants—they host distinct and highly specialized microbial communities within their wood. Deep in the oxygen-limited heartwood, fungi, bacteria, and archaea form unique ecosystems, shaping tree health and even contributing to methane production. This talk explores how these microbiomes vary across tree species and tissues, their interactions, and their surprising role in forest biogeochemistry. |
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Jon Gewirtzman is an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist, and a 5th year PhD candidate at the Yale School of the Environment. His research examines how plant and microbial communities regulate greenhouse gas fluxes in forest ecosystems, with a particular focus on methane emissions from trees and the role of the tree microbiome. By studying interactions between fungi, bacteria, and their hosts across scales—from individual microbes to landscapes—Jon aims to better understand how ecosystems influence and respond to global biogeochemical cycles. Jon earned his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from Brown University and an MPhil from Yale. Before his PhD, he worked as a research technician in Woods Hole, Boston, and the Alaskan Arctic.
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Thursday May 22, 2025 7:30 pm
Mammals, Truffles, and Trees: Linking Above- and Below-ground Interactions Many fungal taxa have evolved to fruit belowground (truffles) and require animals, particularly small mammals, to consume and disperse spores. This is a key mutualistic interaction where in exchange for providing spore dispersal, small mammals get an important food source. Focusing on communities from the Northeastern and Midwestern USA, this talk will discuss the factors that shape the interactions between truffles and small mammals, and the drivers of mammal-mediated fungal spore dispersal across spatial scales, including the role of predators as secondary dispersers. |
Ryan Stephens is an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University in the Department of Biology. Ryan earned his PhD in Earth and Environmental Science at UNH in 2018. He studies how habitat associations, resource availability, and biotic interactions influence the dietary niche of mammals and their functional roles in forested systems as dispersers of mycorrhizal fungi.
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Thursday June 5, 2025 7:30pm
The Midas Mushroom: Ecological Impacts of Invasive Golden Oyster Mushrooms Golden oyster mushrooms (GOM; Pleurotus citrinopileatus) have become the new friendly, neighborhood, easily found, edible mushroom- but are they friendly neighbors to local fungi? In this talk, we’ll discuss our findings regarding GOM’s negative impacts, where it could spread to next, and how you all can help out with the research moving forward! |
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Aishwarya Veerabahu (Pringle Lab, University of Wisconsin): Aishwarya Veerabahu is a 3rd year Botany PhD candidate, studying fungal ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, advised by Dr. Anne Pringle, with a PhD minor in Life Science Communication, advised by Dr. Dominique Brossard. She is broadly interested in studying fungal biodiversity, drivers of diversity, cross-kingdom interactions, science communication, and science policy concerning fungi (or the lack thereof!). When she’s not doing science, she’s jamming out with her band.
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Last Updated: 2025-04-25
