Come ring in the New Year with your mushroom fam! Our January meeting will highlight the amazing work and conservation efforts of our own rockstar MAWDC members. Mark your calendar!
The meeting will be held via Zoom (link below). MAWDC President Elizabeth Hargrave will kick things off with updates on club activities and fungi in the news. Program Chair Annie Weissman will lead the virtual ID table, highlighting recent fungal finds posted to the MAWDC iNaturalist Project.
Our short presentation will highlight the work of Adele Medina O’Dowd and Annika Haksar. Adele and Annika are MAWDC members, friends and partners leading a tree conservation project: The Norwood Park Arboriculture Project -- a special project of the Little Falls Watershed Alliance -- established in 2022 to monitor, protect and appreciate the collection of mature canopy trees at Norwood Local Park in Chevy Chase, MD tucked into their neighborhood off Wisconsin Ave and below Bradley Blvd. Besides working on this project together, they are landscape design partners, both ISA certified arborists and fine hand pruning experts with some expertise in entomology (IPM), plant pathology and native plants. Over time, they have become self-taught ecologists with a special interest in riparian ecosystems observing natural habitats for native organisms. In previous lives, Annika was an environmental economist and Adele worked as an information architect and graphic designer for the Holocaust Museum. These days Annika travels often to India and Sweden where she is from. Adele makes ceramics based on physics concepts she wants to understand. Annika and Adele met when their kids were little and on the soccer team and girl scouts together. Sometimes feeling like the duo Lucy and Ethel with many schemes going on at once, they love to "play" with boulders in other peoples' yards and taking folks on tree tours at Norwood Park.
Isaiah Bednash will be our featured speaker for the evening!
Description: In 1993, California was estimated to home 4,693 endemic plant species and by 2001 that estimate grew to 6,300. As one of earth’s most vital biodiversity hotspots, California’s habitat variety parallels fungi diversity without exception.
CA FunDiS grew with support from California State & California Institute for Biodiversity seeking to establish a voucher-based, DNA-powered inventory to secure California ecosystems. This became the first state-level initiative to develop a team pursuing fungal conservation, including their habitats. With over 5,200 observations from 15 collectors in Year 1 alone, CA FunDiS is emphasizing how California’s ecosystems are reliant on kingdom fungi.
Isaiah Bednash will share the milestones of CA FunDiS Year 1 from his perspective as a sequence validator. We’ll uncover the team’s collections process, remarkable discoveries during sequencing, and the incredible herbarium support at California State University East Bay. Zay is profusely proud of the CA FunDiS team and eager to share our headway!
Zoom Link:
https://zoom.us/j/96693690911?pwd=YWdyeXh1bHF1N1UyNjNieFovNWFUZz09
Meeting ID 966 9369 0911
Passcode 330827
One Tap Mobile +13017158592,,96693690911#,,,,*330827# US (Washington DC)
Find your local Zoom access number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kQ9hr47WO
