Greetings
from Wisconsin!! I am an Associate Professor in the Department
of Biology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where I teach
courses on General Mycology, Medical Mycology, Plant-Microbe Interactions,
Latin and Greek for Scientists, as well as parts of Plant Biology. La Crosse is located in western Wisconsin on the Mississippi River in the beautiful driftless (unglaciated) area, between the river and spectacular 500-600 ft. bluffs. Here at La Crosse I am currently supervising four graduate students in Mycology right now (Sean Westmoreland from Appalachian State University in North Carolina, Nik Zitomer from Penn State University, Josh Burgess from UW- La Crosse, and Shai White from Ohio Wesleyan University via UW- La Crosse, and I'd love to hear from you if you're interested in a Master's degree (M.S.) with an emphasis on fungi, especially basidiomycetes.
I am likely to have some grant money to support another student. Our department is likely to have some graduate (teaching) assistantships available if you qualify. We also have great M.S. programs in Microbiology, Clinical Microbiology, Aquatic Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and several more. I'm Director of Graduate Studies for our department now, so write me at
volk.thom@uwlax.edu if you would like more information. We also have some wonderful undergraduate programs, with small class sizes and with *real* Professors, not Teaching Assistants, teaching almost all of the lectures and labs. We place a high emphasis on undergraduate research here. I currently have four undergraduate students working in my lab.
We need your help! My student Sean Westmoreland, needs fresh specimens of Hydnellum (not Hydnum, Phellodon, or Sarcodon) for his research. If you are willing to help, contact Sean at antedon@centurytel.net
Be sure to check out the newly updated Fungi that are necessary for a merry Christmas and Fungal Diseases that must be overcome to have a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.
I've got my own domain! You can now get to this page using my new domain name TomVolkFungi.net That will bring you directly to this page. Be sure to tell all your friends! :-)
Click here to jump to listings of the Fungus of the Month, or just scroll down a bit to see all the other interesting things on this page.
The Minnesota Mycological Society held the 2001 NAMA foray, July 5-8, 2001 at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN, about 70 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. I was the chief Mycologist, and I also presented a very successful 2-day workshop on polypore identification after the foray. The NAMA foray is a great place to learn many species of fungi in a short amount of time. Even though it had been dry, we collected more than 215 species of fungi! Click here for a list of species put together by Foray recorder Pat Leacock. Many other guest mycologists were also there to lend their expertise. Hope to see you at the next one!
I presented a short course called "Catching up on mycology: What modern plant scientists should know about fungi" before the Mycological Society of America/ American Phytopathological Society/ Society of Nematologists annual meeting in Salt Lake City August 24. You can read about this one-day 9am-4:30pm course here. There were 120 students in the course from 35 states of the USA, 3 Canadian provinces, Argentina, and South Korea.
I'm proud to announce that my first graduate student, Marsha Harbin, won one of four graduate student research prizes for her poster presentation at the International Botanical Congress/ Mycological Society of America meeting in St. Louis, August 1999. Her poster, co-authored with me, was entitled "The relationship of Morchella (morels) with plant roots." Marsha was also presented with the "2000 Outstanding Thesis Award for the Department of Biology and the College of Science and Allied Health at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse." Congratulations to Marsha! She finished her M.S. degree in December 1999.
During the month of December 2001 this page received its 358,000th hit since going online in November of 1995. Over 138,000 of those hits have come in the past year. Note that I only count hits to this main page; there have been thousands more to my other sub-pages. For example, all my pages combined received more than 380,000 hits in the past year. Many thanks to all of you from all over the world who have taken a few minutes to write and say hello or to send your compliments or criticism in the past 6 years that this page has been online. If you write, please let me know from what city and country you're writing from, or what state if you're in the USA. I've got a map on my wall with pins in the countries and states where my pages have been read! So I'd especially like to hear from you if you're reading this from outside the USA. [This site doesn't track anyone, and I don't have a mailing list of any sort-- I have enough problems answering the emails I get already. I also lost several weeks of email because of something stupid my computer did in upgrading my email program. I apologize if I haven't gotten to your email yet. ] With an email I received from Bonnie Bratina from Antarctica, I have now received email from continents where my web page has been viewed. Thanks Bonnie!
Special greetings to new visitors from a story and link (plus a picture of me with lots of morels!) in Sports Afield magazine, the March 2001 issue. You're probably interested in these links: The morel was fungus of the month and there's also a page about the morel life cycle. Of course you should feel free to browse the pages below as well. There's plenty of fungi worth hunting! With this article, maybe we should start considering mushroom hunting as a sport? I guess I always have. There's the thrill of the chase, finding things to eat or to look at. Theoretically, mushrooms should be easier to find than animals because they don't move. -- but they also have *much* better camouflage and they don't make any noises to tell you where they are either. Maybe things are about equal...
My website has
received many honors and awards, but the one I am proudest of is from Science
Magazine. My site was presented with a "Cool Images Site" Award in the
February 5, 1999 issue. Thanks to the American Association for the Advancement
of Science for the honor. I have also recently been listed in Natural Selection, a gateway to quality evaluated Internet resources in the natural world, coordinated by The Natural History Museum, London. Natural Selection is part of BIOME, an integrated collection of Internet gateways covering the health and life sciences. I hope new visitors will find these pages interesting-- I try to have something for everyone here.
This page was last updated on January 3, 2002 and contains:
Fungus of the month for January 2002 Which one will it be?
In May 2001 I gave a series of lectures in California, to the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, and the Sonoma County Mycological Association, followed by a lecture at the Plant Pathology Department at the University of California- Davis. It was a fun trip, and we found morels and lots of other fungi in the mountains also.
I also participated in the Northeast Mycological Federation (NEMF) Foray August 16-19, 2001 at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The NEMF is a federation of all (well, almost all) of the amateur mycology clubs in the northeast United States and adjacent Canada. I had a great time, saw many mushrooms, met many old and new friends, and lectured on "Mycological Cannibalism: Fungi that eat other fungi."
In 2002 our workshop on the "Introduction to the Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of Michigan." will return to Ford Forestry Center in L'Anse Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula in mid September. The 2001 Michigan Mushroom workshop at the Kettunin Center was canceled. We don't have information yet on the 2002 Workshop-- stay tuned. For details on the 2000 workshop click here.
I
did my Ph.D. dissertation in 1988 on the life cycle of the genus Morchella--This
is the result of my first morel hunt in 1983.-- but it's been all
downhill ever since...
Besides my job as an Associate Professor of Biology at UW-La Crosse, I have maintained my association with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Botany, where I am an Honorary Fellow, and I thank them for letting me maintain my pages there. I have worked extensively with Michael Clayton of the UW-Madison Botany Department in scanning in and polishing these images. Visit Mike Clayton's Virtual Foliage Home Page for information on how my fungi images were digitized and to see his extensive and very impressive collection of images for teaching botany.
"A nomenclatural study of Armillaria and Armillariella species" Fungiflora, Oslo Norway: Synopsis Fungorum 8, 121 pp. (1995).
In this book we have determined the current taxonomic placement of the ~270 species that were once placed in either or both of these genera. Approximately 30 species are currently accepted in Armillaria; the rest belong in 43 other modern genera. We have also published a Key to North American species of Armillaria. In 1996, we described North American Biological Species (NABS) IX as a new species, Armillaria nabsnona Volk & Burdsall. (in Volk, Burdsall & Banik, Mycologia 88 : 484-491, 1996). As promised in that paper here are some color images of Armillaria nabsnona. Or now you can read about the discovery and description of this species For a list of my publications and what I'm working on now, including Armillaria, Laetiporus, Bridgeoporus, Morchella, and a number of fungal biodiversity studies, check out my list of publications. Here are some images of the fungi we work on. WARNING: there are many inline images of fungi on this page, so it may take a while to load at slower modem speeds.
I teach both of my mycology courses (General Mycology and Medical Mycology) plus my portion of Plant-Microbe Interactions and Plant Biology from a Macintosh computer s>
Some smaller size samples of the images in JPEG format are on this page of CFMR fungi and this page of fungi that might be found in Wisconsin.
OBLIGATE DISCLAIMER: Of course, you should consult an appropriate field guide or scientific literature with extensive descriptions if you plan on collecting any mushrooms for eating purposes. Remember you must carefully and completely (and correctly!) identify a fungus to species to be sure about eating it.
Since La Crosse is just across the Mississippi River from Minnesota, I am also a member (and one of the scientific advisors) of the Minnesota Mycological Society, which holds forays and weekly meetings during the fall and monthly meetings other times of the year. If you want further information on the MMS, we have a new web page at http://www.minnesotamushrooms.org.
If you're from another area of North America and want to join a mycological society, mushroom club, or fungus federation, check out Mykoweb's listing of North American Mushroom Clubs for one near you. You'll be glad you did!
In 2000 I participated, for my eleventh time, in the national foray of the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) in Beaumont, Texas June 8-12, 2000. it was a wonderful foray of about 125 people. We found about 265 species of fungi, many of which were completely foreign to me. Many tropical fungi are found fruiting in east Texas in the hot summer months. We also had a great time eating Cajun food and listening and dancing to live Cajun bands. You missed a good one if you decided to stay home. Check out NAMA's web page. I have also been privileged to be the mycologist at the annual foray of The New Mexico Mycological Society at Chama NM in August 1997. Very nice people, and with the monsoon rains at their peak, LOTS of mushrooms. But as they told me to say at the foray, "There is no Boletus edulis in New Mexico." I have also been the mycologist at forays for the Minnesota Mycological Society, the Texas Mycological Society. the Gulf States Mycological Society, the Asheville (NC) Mushroom Club, the Rochester (NY) Area Mycological Association, the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA), the Missouri Mycological Society, and have given lectures at the Boston Mycological Club, the Illinois Mycological Association, the New Jersey Mycological Association, the The New York Mycological Society, the Oregon Mycological Society, the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, the Wisconsin Mycological Society. I was also at the Northeast Mycological Federation Foray at Sugar Loaf Mountain, Maine in 1999 (I got to have lobster twice!), at the 2000 NEMF foray in Storrs, CT, and I was at the 2001 NEMF foray at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst August 16-19.
In 2000 I gave a workshop on polypores and a lecture on morels to the New Jersey Mycological Association, a lecture on forest fungi to the New York Mycological Society in Manhattan, a lecture on DNA and fungal systematics at the Texas NAMA foray, a weekend foray in Minnesota in July, a mushroom workshop in Michigan in September, a three-day workshop in Eagle Hill Maine in August, and I was the keynote speaker at the NEMF foray in Storrs, CT in August. I was the foray mycologist for the Gulf States Mycological Society / NAMA regional foray in Wakullah Springs FL December 1-3, 2000. The forays are a lot of fun--and many of the so-called "amateurs" know more mushrooms than I do! I like forays a whole lot, and I'd love to come to yours! Email me!
Note: I also enjoy presenting university departmental seminars-- I presented seminars in 1999 at the Plant Pathology Department at Penn State University in June, the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Maine in October and at St. Mary's University in Winona MN in November. In 2000 I lectured at the New York Botanical Garden in March and at the Biology Dept. at Minnesota State University- Mankato in October. In November I presented seminars at Portland (OR) State University, at Oregon State University and the Forest Service in Corvallis, OR. In May 2001 I presented a seminar at the University of California-Davis, and in Nov. I presented a seminar at Harvard University.
George Barron of the Department of Environmental Biology at the University of Guelph in Southern Ontario has published a field guide to Mushrooms of Northeast North America, also published as "Mushrooms of Ontario and Eastern Canada." I've got my copy and it's really a beautiful book. The organization is marvelous and the photographs are wonderful. Please visit his web page for more information. It's very well done and a must have for every amateur and professional field mycologist in this area. Congratulations, George!
For further information on plant pathogens that affect many types of crop plants and forests and what plant pathologists are doing about them, you should visit the home page of the American Phytopathological Society.
A great innovation in disseminating biodiversity and taxonomic information may be found at Digital Exsiccate of Fungi. The Digital Exsiccate of Fungi is an online database offering descriptions of wood-decay fungi primarily in the genera Hyphodontia and Botryobasidium complemented by detailed illustrations. It is maintained in Germany by Ewald Langer and Gitta Langer.
For another fungal biodiversity site, I would suggest you check out Roy Halling's and Greg Mueller's web page on Macrofungi of Costa Rica. This page is an excellent example of succinct, user-friendly reporting of biodiversity information in a way that is accessible to researchers, students and the public. Including pictures is certainly more likely to get people's attention than the mere publishing of a list, or even a list with descriptions. Not that publishing lists is bad-- I've done it myself!
If you're interested in learning something about medical mycology, I highly recommend the Medical Mycology Page at Doctorfungus.org. This site is very well put together and contains lots of information on and pictures of various human diseases and conditions that are caused by fungi.
You can also visit a nice Medical Mycology web site set up by the UW- Madison Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.
Here's a link to a very comprehensive mushroom book called Mushrooms of Northeastern North America. This book is "the" book for mushrooms in the northeast and midwest, including nearly 1500 species and 650 color photographs--- plus keys. I'm using it for my Mycology course in the fall semester. There's a computerized key to genera of the gilled mushrooms at that website that I suggest you try out. Looks good! I also suggest you check out Dave Fischer's Real Answers About Mushrooms.
For an online Mycology journal, I suggest you check out Mycoinfo, a site by Brian McNett and Phil McIntosh. They have a great deal of information about many different aspects of mycology, for the professional as well as the amateur.
For additional images and descriptions of fungi, check out Mike Wood and Fred Stevens' really outstanding "Fungi of the San Francisco Bay area" : Mykoweb: Mike's Mycological Museum, where you will finds links to pictures and descriptions of over 300 species of fungi with more than 1100 photographs. Their website is worth many return visits. They also have a CD-ROM version of all their excellent pictures and descriptions.
Ever wonder what the connections are between the sexual state (teleomorph) of a fungus (or the fungus in its entirety-- the holomorph) and its asexual state (anamorph)? Now there's a searchable database at The Anamorph/Holomorph Connections Database at the University of Alberta in Canada. Very well done. I encourage you to contribute if you can!
I could list lots of other great Mycological sites, but this has already been done by several others. The most extensive and impressive listing of Mycological Resources on the Internet is maintained by Kathie Hodge at Cornell University. Thanks Kathie!
It would be great to hear from you. Let me know what you think about these pages.
******************************************** (0) ************ Tom Volk (000) Associate Professor of Biology (00000) 3024 Cowley Hall (00000) University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (00000) La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601 USA (000) volk.thom@uwlax.edu | | ******************************************** | | ************* http://TomVolkFungi.net or TomVolkFungi.net