Monday, July 5, 2010

MSA 2010

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America, which was in Lexington, Kentucky, the heart of Horse Country and the land of Bourbon Whiskey. I gave a talk on lichen-associated bacteria (Hodkinson & Lutzoni 2010) and it was quite well-received. There were some great talks, and I enjoyed having an opportunity to catch up with fellow friends of fungi!

One of the great things about the MSA meetings is that there's always a jam session at night, and since I play guitar, I'm always excited to join in. Here is a video of part of a long slow jam to the tune House of the Rising Sun:
We played a real variety of tunes from old-time to punk to country to rock, etc., on into the night.

At the end of the conference there was a final banquet and auction, where I made out with a hefty stack of great old mycological books and papers (thanks to Betsy Arnold for her work on the auction)! There were also some more whimsical items. Here you can see the distinguished Dr. Methven sporting some newly-acquired mycological apparel that he won at the auction.

I would encourage anyone who has an interest in fungi to join the society. There are ten different types of membership, so there's a place for everyone! I'm certainly looking forward to the next meeting!

-Brendan



Reference:

Hodkinson, B. P., and F. Lutzoni. 2010. Do lichens harbor their own rhizobia? A large-scale phylogenetic survey of lichen-associated bacteria from the order Rhizobiales. Inoculum 61(4): 55-56.
View Inoculum issue (PDF file)

2 comments:

  1. Hey! I'm a fungi! Can I join your society? (OK so it doesn't really work in print...)

    Sounds like a great conference Brendan!

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  2. Hello fellow blogger! (I would give you the secret 'blogger sign' but that doesn't really work in print, either...)
    I really liked your blog post on anosognosia:
    http://intellogist.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/errol-morris-talks-patent-searching/
    My main goal for my upcoming "Cladonia Systematics" workshop at the Botany 2010 conference will be getting participants to identify some of their 'unknown unknowns' so that these will at least become 'known unknowns.' I hope people will appreciate the emphasis on critical thinking!

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