Good Mushroom Year

The last few weeks have brought an amazing bloom of mushrooms in these parts. Here’s me in the middle of a faerie ring of Russula. We don’t know the species, but this one appears to be an ectomycorrhizal symbiont of oak trees (as are many of the common basidiomycetes around here). The outbreak of mushrooms has been a boon for my lab because we have started some studies on native mushroom feeding Drosophila. We collected some of these Russula and placed them in a container as a bait in order to trap the flies by netting them. (You can also use store bought mushrooms for this, but for the purposes of the experiment, we wanted to use the same kinds of mushrooms as the flies had already been eating [as larvae].) Males of the mushroom feeding species also use the mushrooms as lekking sites.

It has always mystified me why so many people have the urge to eat wild mushrooms. Given that some are incredibly poisonous, it never seemed to me to be worth messing around with them. Of course, many of them are edible and some are incredibly tasty. Still, I’m happy with the ones from the store.