Info to watch for this year: A mushroom forming basidiomycete living in fresh running water has been found and name Psathyrella aquatica. A paper is expected this year describing how the habitat and dna-genus-identity was established. If you hear/see anything new on this, please do post! I enjoy hearing about lifeforms that seem to fit a "missing link" evolutionary category, such as Entoloma abortivum whose form suggests it may be about to move underground, birds whose wings are transforming into fins, digits becoming webbed, that sort of thing. -frog
Definitely a challenge to find any information on this mushroom on the internet. A very neat discovery though. This might be a stupid question but is this just a new species of underwater mushroom or is it the first and only underwater mushroom ever found? I would love to see some pictures of this!
I don't know if any of the freshwater or marine fungi produce something one could call a mushroom... but they must produce fruiting bodies of some sort, and I know there are basidiomycetes out there in the water not just ascos and etc. Worth searching...
Here's a small press release from Southern Oregon Univ. If anyone knows how to get a hold of the photographer Robert Coffan, I'd like to correspond with him re: using his photograph on BPotD.
Hi Daniel. I searched the Southern Oregon University site and came up with this email address: CoffanR@sou.edu
Yeah I did the exact search you did and came up with nothing. But on the opening page of the site there is a "find it" search tool that worked. Weird why they wouldn't have that in the faculty/staff directory.
