We do research in fungal systematics and evolutionary biology. We collect field specimens and natural history collections to discern taxonomic and evolutionary relationships of mushrooms using methods of phylogenetic inference. We use phylogenies not just for classification purposes, but also to test hypotheses about the evolution of symbioses, fungal biogeographical patterns, trait evolution, and patterns of diversification in mushrooms.

MASMC and various awards for lab members

Eight of us Vols trekked upwards to Beltsville, Maryland for the 34th MASMC meeting, a conference geared towards presentation of undergraduate and graduate student research. This years participants came from Tennessee, North Carolina State, Clemson, Duke, North Carolina A&T, Maryland, Clark, Rutgers, and Akron, among others. Happy to say that Christine Braaten received a travel award to the conference from the UT Plant Research Center. For his presentation Joshua won a MASMC research prize. In addition, Marisol won a research award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. Way to go, guys!

Muscarine/psilocybin paper now in press

Current BCMB grad student Pawel Kosentka has led the publication of a research paper accepted by PLoS One on the evolution of two fungal toxins in the Inocybaceae. The SARIF Open Publishing Fund via the UT library will subsidize the open access charges.

Joshua wins ‘Science Alliance’ prize

Science Alliance prizes are awarded to advanced PhD students across our units of Biology (Micro, BCMB, EEB). Joshua was one of a handful of winners of the prize this year. Congrats to Joshua for a pretty handsome award.

MASMC is coming up at the end of the month

And we’re bringing an onslaught from Knoxville to Beltsville. Joshua, Marisol, Brian, and Christine will all be giving talks at this one-day conference held every spring. Jessica Bryant, a PhD student with Aimee Classen, will be joining us, as well as our postgrad lab assistant, Hailee Korotkin.

9 April 2013: Brian Looney wins honorable mention award

Brian submitted a graduate research fellowship proposal to NSF last fall for work on the genus Russula and received an honorable mention. He’ll get another crack at this prestigious award this coming fall. Nice job, Brian!

11 March 2013: Congrats to Martin Ryberg, former postdoc

Martin is now a Research Professor at the University of Uppsala. Martin returned to Sweden from his 2.5 year postdoc with us. He was just offered and accepted a permanent position. Time for a field trip to Sweden and to pay our homages to Elias Fries.

8 March 2013: Brian and Joshua have papers in press

Brian Looney’s work on southeastern U.S. species of Auricularia is now in press with North American Fungi. The first chapter of Joshua’s PhD thesis is in press at Mycologia and provides a systematic, evolutionary, and ecological overview of the Clavariacaee, a family that may be the sister group to the rest of the Agaricales.

1 March 2013: Congrats to Pawel Kosentka and Sarah Sprague! There work on muscarine and psilocybin evolution in the Inocybaceae has been accepted with minor revisions in PLoS One.

12 February 2013: Welcome to new members of the lab, Mitchell Connell, Sean Dornbush, and Hailee Korotkin

We’d like to welcome three new additions to our research group including two undergraduates, Mitchell Connell and Sean Dornbush, and one recent UT graduate Hailee Korotkin. Mitchell has interests in environmental studies and is being mentored by PhD student, Joshua Birkebak. Sean is a pre-med biology major, mentored by PhD student Marisol Sanchez; Sean is interested in use of molecular tools for phylogenetic studies. And, our third new lab member, Hailee Korotken, is a recent graduate from the business school on campus. Hailee has interests in fungal biology and cultivation. We are disappointed to see the departure of undergrad Sarah Slocum, who has migrated to a psychology lab more in line with her future research interests. We wish her the best and will miss Sarah. Welcome to the lab, Mitchell, Sean, and Hailee!

1 February 2013: Brandon returns from Estonia: UNITE jamboree

Urmas Koljalg, director of Natural History Museum at the University of Tartu, hosted numerous fungal taxonomists (mainly from European countries) to annotate reference ITS sequences of species of fungi. These reference sequences will be used to anchor species hypotheses at various similarity thresholds for metagenomic studies of the environment.

10 September 2012: Brandon returns from Malaysian fungal taxonomic workshop with field ecologists

Brandon got to work with Krista McQuire from Barnard College and Kabir Peay from Stanford and numerous undergrads and forestry technicians and taxonomic experts Bart Buyck, Roy Halling, and Urmas Koljalg at the Pasoh dipterocarp forest plot located on pensinular Malaysia.

6 September 2012: Towards a North American Mycoflora project

Here’s a link to great talks as YouTube videos at the FESIN workshop at Yale University led by Tom Bruns from Cal-Berkeley.

1 September 2012: Martin returns to Sweden

Well, we’re disappointed to see him go, but Martin is on to newer and bigger things at this new position in Uppsala, Sweden, a coming home. Had a final poker party as a farewell.

2 July 2012: Emma Harrower, new PhD student to start this fall

Emma earned her Master’s degree from the University of Toronto with Jean-Marc Moncalvo studying diversity of Cortinarius in North America. She received her undergrad from the University of British Columbia where she was mentored by Mary Berbee. Emma will be partially funded by an NSERC grant from the Canadian government.

7 June 2012: Virginia Ramirez Cruz, summer visitor to the lab

Virginia is visiting our lab this summer to produce multiple-gene data for a phylogeny of Psilocybe and Deconica. She is currently a Master’s student at the University of Guadalajara where she is working with Dr. Laura Guzman Davalos. Marisol Sanchez is also assisting with this project. Welcome to Knoxville, Viki!

25 April 2012: Martin Ryberg on to a new position in Sweden

Martin won a competitive postdoctoral position at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Martin has been extremely productive during his postdoc stay with us, and we are sorry to see him go. Martin will be returning home to a new position with opportunity for promotion as of 1 September. Congratulations, Martin!

15 April 2012: Brian Looney, new PhD student to start this fall

I’ll have a third PhD student enter the lab this fall, Brian Looney. Brian is from the Nashville area and has traveled extensively and lived in Japan and southeast Asia. He’ll be completing a research project on Auricularia (jelly fungi) in the southeast United States this summer, as part of his undergraduate research. However, his field taxonomic interests lie with Russula and Lactarius.

15 March 2012: Elizabeth returns to Melbourne

Elizabeth Sheedy’s six-month visit supported by NSF in our lab has come to a close with her return to Melbourne to complete her PhD on population genetics and conservation of Laccaria species in Australia. A draft of her research results here on evolution of false truffles in Australia is in the works.

15 March 2012: Back from Queensland, Australia

Brandon returned from a fungal collecting trip in far north Queensland centered around Cairns and the Atherton Tableland and southeast Queensland near Brisbane. This trip was coordinated with Neale Bougher, Matt Barrett, Sandra Abell, Roy Halling, and Nigel Fechner. Collecting took place in dry and wet sclerophyll communities, lowland tropical paperbark swamps, and in warm temperate rainforest. We estimate collection of ca. 30 morphological species of Inocybe and Auritella. The majority of these will be new to science.

5 March 2012: Joshua get his DDIG funded from NSF

Joshua Birkebak, third-year PhD student, received a 15K doctoral dissertation improvement grant from the National Science Foundation. This will enable Joshua to produce a multigene phylogeny for the Clavariaceae and help him enhance the central chapter of his PhD thesis. Congratulations, Joshua!

1 February 2012: REU supplement award

The second REU (research experience for undergraduates) supplement to our ongoing NSF grant on Australian Inocybaceae was awarded. This will support Brian Looney this summer part-time and another student this coming fall.

16 January 2012: New undergrad joins the lab

Christine Braaten, ex-Navy and a returning student, has joined the lab and will learn techniques in molecular systematics and fungal taxonomy. Christine is a good collector and has a broad interest in systematics of Agaricomycetes. She is also producing wiki pages for miscellaneous species of mushroom-forming fungi. Welcome to the lab, Christine.

16 January 2012: New Entolomataceae paper published

Tim Baroni and I published a work placing two rarely encountered southeast USA species, the false truffle Richoniella asterospora and the cyphelloid species Rhodocybella rhododendri, within the genus Entoloma. This work was published in Harvard Papers in Botany; a pdf of the paper can be found on the publications page.

5 December 2011: ECM Agaricales paper accepted

Martin and I have had our work on “Asynchronous origins of ectomycorrhizal clades of Agaricales” accepted by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

10 November 2011: NSF DDIG proposal submitted

Joshua got his doctoral dissertation improvement grant submitted. If funded, Joshua will focus his priority on establishing a multi-gene phylogeny for the Clavariaceae and examine patterns of ecological and morphological evolution within the group.

31 August 2011: New additions to the lab

- Marisol Sanchez has joined the lab as a first-year PhD student. Marisol is from Mexico City and previously completed her Master’s degree on systematics of Melanoleuca with Joaquin Cifuentes at UNAM. Marisol will work on a poorly known clade or grade of mushroom-forming fungi that centers around Leucopaxillus, Porpoloma, and Dennisiomyces.

- Elizabeth Sheedy joins us for a six-month visit from the University of Melbourne and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne. Elizabeth is a PhD student working on population genetics and systematics of Laccaria and allies. While at Tennessee she will be working with Martin Ryberg on the evolution of Australian truffle-forming fungi. We are interested to know whether the process of aridification the last 30 million years or so spurred these fungi to shift underground or if there was a response to pressures supplied by marsupials that rely almost exclusively on truffles for their diet.

- Sarah Slocum is a sophomore with pre-med and psychology interests who will join us this semester to to assist with various lab projects. Sarah was one of the top biodiversity students in our BIO130 course Brandon taught last spring.