March Speaker | Damon Tighe : Bioluminescence and UV fluorescence in CA

Please join us on March 17th for our monthly speaker and social.

Damon will share a stunning visual tour of fungi and other organisms in California that make their own light (bioluminescence) or have compounds that fluoresce strongly under a black light (UV Fluorescence). The best known bioluminescent mushroom in California is the Western Jack'o'Lantern but it is not alone; many of our Mycena have the ability to produce and light which opens up more questions then answers when it comes to the evolutionary pressure behind the phenomenon. UV fluorescence is a nascent field that is exploding quickly as inexpensive UV lights have become easy to purchase. UV fluorescence makes any night hike turn into a little slice of the movie Avatar and might become a useful tool for some genera of fungi that have very distinct UV fluorescent patterns. From Damon: "I'm excited to give this talk for the Fungus Federation, for it was at the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair in 2015 where I first bright a black light and started looking at fluorescence."

FFSC members gather together on the third Tuesday of the month from September through May to catch up, discuss club business, and learn from interesting speakers. Plus, you can bring any fungi you have been lucky enough to find for identification!

Would you like to get to know this month's speaker better? Join us for Dinner with the Speaker at 5pm, prior to this event.

About the Speaker

Damon Tighe is biotechnology educator in the SF East Bay that fell head over heals for fungi after running out of food on the John Muir Trail and seeing large mushrooms and wondering "could I eat that?" He has been a volunteer collector for the California Fungal Diversity Survey team over the past 2 years racking up over 1,000 sequenced vouchers at CSU East Bay's Fungarium. He's a big proponent of open community science platforms like iNaturalist where he has over 100K observations, with almost 25K of them being fungi in California.