CTV did a video news piece on unauthorized mushroom collection on Mt. Doug. It can be viewed at:
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/saanich-residents-concerned-over-illegal-mushroom-picking-at-mt-douglas-park-1.5188750
It features an interview with SVIMS member and past-president Andy MacKinnon.
CTV did a video news piece on unauthorized mushroom collection on Mt. Doug. It can be viewed at:
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/saanich-residents-concerned-over-illegal-mushroom-picking-at-mt-douglas-park-1.5188750
It features an interview with SVIMS member and past-president Andy MacKinnon.
SVIMS General Membership Meeting for November 5th 2020
(South Vancouver Island Mycology Society)
This will once again be a Virtual Meeting via Zoom.
All members will be sent an email about 3 days prior to the event with the secure log in link to the Zoom meeting. Please make sure that you copy down the Meeting number and the password as you may be asked for this before you are let into the meeting. Please make every effort to mute your sound and video. Wear headphones where possible to cut down on background feedback as this interferes with any recording and can even block the feed from the speaker. All registered members with an email and who have updated their profiles should have received a Username and Password over the past 6 weeks. The latter only can be changed at this time and not the username. The website continues to be developed and all sections are accessible to the public except the secure members’ only section and that only by logging in. You do NOT have to log in to this member’s site to join the Zoom meeting which can be accessed by that link in the email sent to the members. Please do not share that link. We have received permission from our speaker to record the meeting which will then be included in the members only section as well as to post it as a live feed to the Facebook site, which is the backup if for some reason you cannot get into the Zoom meeting.
There will be some general announcements preceding the speaker.
Meeting Start Time: The meeting will open at 6:45 PM Pacific time and it would be appreciated if everyone is checked in by 7:00PM. Coming in after 7:00 PM, when the meeting is under way results in interference particularly if you are not muted.
Our Speaker: Editor-in-Chief of Mycotaxon: Lorelei L. Norvell editor@mycotaxon.com Pacific Northwest Mycology Service 6720 NW Skyline, Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97229-1309 USA
Title: Capturing hypotheses in Phaeocollybia: The Canadian Connection
“Dr. Lorelei Norvell is the editor in chief of the highly regarded journal- Mycotaxon.
The naming of fungi, their relationships and identification are critically important aspects in their study. Molecular approaches and concepts have impacted on our knowledge of species and genera.
Lorelei in her talk is going to use Phaeocollybia only as an example of her personal journey from the initial finds on Vancouver Island and her encounters with some Canadian Mycologists-characters. Did they get it right or wrong? What did the increasing sophistication of molecular studies uncover?”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lorelei_Norvell which has details of her very impressive CV
Lorelei will be introduced by Adolf Ceska
Reminder to everyone that there is a regional fungi events list here:
https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/fungi-events.321/?order=title&direction=asc
When: Thursday, October 1st, 2020, 7:00 pm
Where: This will be a Zoom presentation and will be limited to members only and not recorded, but will be live streamed to our Facebook page.
You will receive a link to the Zoom meeting 1 day prior to the event.
Topic: Household hyphae: novel, remarkable, and obscure fungi of the indoor environment
We spend approximately 90 percent of our lives indoors – but exactly who are our fungal housemates? A global survey sought to provide insight into indoor fungal biodiversity and develop an authoritative and reliable identification system. Fungal biodiversity was explored using indoor dust samples collected from 93 buildings in 12 countries worldwide, and subsequently investigated with an approach combining next generation sequencing and a novel dilution-to-extinction isolation technique. I will discuss some of the results from this research project with an emphasis on the ecology and taxonomy of some of the common, novel, and remarkable fungi identified and described from more than 200,000 sequences and 9,000 cultures.
Believe it or not, your home is an extreme environment filled with extremophiles: fungi called xerophilies, who grow on substrates with low water activities (think deserts and desserts). Learn about Wallemia, typically associated with dried fruits, jams, maple syrup, and salted meats, which is sometimes one of the most abundant genera in homes. Meet the obscure Diploöspora rosea, a forgotten fungus described in England and re-discovered one hundred years later from a home in Kosrae, Micronesia. Prepare to be motivated to vacuum and mop after seeing Aspergillus subgenus Polypaecilum, a group including some opportunistic pathogens of humans and dogs, which lives happily in extreme environments such as desert caves, salt mines, salted fish – and indoors. Forget the COVID-19 travel concerns and vicariously join me on a mycological grand tour from Canada to Mexico to South Africa to Micronesia and more.
Photo: James Holkko |
Presentation: Joel Tanney
Joey Tanney is a research scientist (mycologist) with the Canadian Forest Service (Pacific Forestry Centre) who recently moved to Victoria from Québec in the fall of 2018. He studied forestry at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario but was bit by the mycology bug during a third-year forest pathology course and has never looked back. He completed his BSc. F. and MSc. F. at Lakehead University, PhD at Carleton University, and a post-doc with Richard Hamelin at Laval Université in Québec. His favourite fungi are dematiaceous hyphomycetes and inoperculate discomycetes and he looks forward to collecting and describing new species from Vancouver Island.
Andy MacKinnon: Andy is a forest ecologist who lives in Metchosin, British Columbia, Canada. Since December 2014, has also served as a Municipal Councilor in Metchosin. After completing graduate work in mycology (the study of fungi) at the University of British Columbia in 1982, Andy worked on-and-off as a forest ecologist for the BC Forest Service until his retirement in 2015. While at the Forest Service, Andy was responsible for ecosystem classification and mapping and for a program of forest ecology research focused on old growth structure and composition, effects of climate change, and BC’s native plants, fungi, and lichens. His recent research interests include ecology of BC’s ectomycorrhizal fungal species. He was lead BC scientist for Environment Canada’s 2017 ranking of BC’s threatened and endangered fungalspecies.
Andy has also taught rainforest ecology field courses in Bamfield and Tofino BC (for the University of Victoria) and Haida Gwaii (for the University of BC). He has also taught mushroom identification courses in Tofino (for the Rainforest Education Society) and in Victoria. He is co-author of six best-selling books about plants of western North America, and co-author (with Kem Luther) of the upcoming Royal BC Museum Handbook “Mushrooms of BC” (due June 2021). He is an Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University and a (retired) Professional Forester and Professional Biologist in BC. Andy was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree by Simon Fraser University in 2013. He is past president of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (SVIMS), and an enthusiastic participant, speaker, and field trip leader for various mushroom festivals in southwestern BC each autumn.
