Chapter Meeting: Mycorrhizal Fungi

March 14, 2022

Mycorrhizae play important roles in plant nutrition, soil biology, and soil chemistry. David Lewis talks about mycorrhizal fungi and its role in a plant’s rhizosphere, its root system. He also discusses fungi in the garden and edible fungi in an extended Q&A.

About the Speaker

David P. Lewis, M.S., is a retired chemist and avid mycologist with a BS and MS from Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, where his master’s thesis was based on a study of East Texas mushrooms. Currently, David is a research associate with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL, where 5000 of his fungi collections are deposited. He is also a research associate with the Tracy Herbarium at Texas A&M University where 5500 of his fungi collections are deposited. From 2006 to 2018, he was the Fungal TWIG (coordinator for mycologists) for the Big Thicket National Preserve All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. He is past president of the Gulf States Mycological Society, has authored many papers related to mycology, and discovered several new species of mushrooms (four species are named for him). He was a recipient of The North American Mycological Association’s award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology in 2009 and the R.E. Jackson Conservation Award from the Big Thicket Association in 2010. In 2021 he received the Mycological Society of America “Gordon and Tina Wasson Award” for contributions to mycology. With Alan and Arleen Bessette, he co-authored Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States – A Field Guide to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Hosted by Environmental Institute of Houston, University of Houston-Clear Lake