Tess Blackwelder and Dr. Leigh Johnson, Integrative Biology

The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University houses many biological collections for study and display. Among the collections of insects, plants, fish, and mammals, there is also a fungi collection. This was donated to BYU by mycologist Kent McKnight (former BYU faculty) several years ago upon his death. Unfortunately, this collection had been rather neglected; it was neither organized, documented, nor accessible to others, and a complete inventory of the scope of the collection did not exist. My ORCA grant idea was to sort through the collection, set up an effective system of organization, create a digital database and begin entering data on each specimen, and finally to get the database online and linked to the MLB Museum’s website for public access.

I chose Dr. Leigh Johnson, curator of the vascular plant collection and overseer of the fungi collection, as my mentor. He taught most of the botany classes I have taken at BYU so we already had a good working relationship. Dr. Johnson was very excited about getting the fungi collection up to speed. He is skilled with computers and gave a lot of advice on how to set up the database, add photos, etc.

I started working on this project Winter semester 2007, before I had even found out if my ORCA grant application was accepted. I began by emailing mycologists and curators of plant and fungi collections at various Universities and Herbaria around the country to get a consensus on the best way to preserve and organize fungi. This was a great networking exercise to become acquainted with current mycologists and was met with enthusiastic replies of support and advice. From these emails I learned I should alphabetize the fungi by genus and begin a regular schedule of freezing the collection for 72 hours to limit insect infestations. In preserving a fungi collection, the two main concerns are humidity and insects. Fortunately, Utah is a dry climate so the room did not need to be de-humidified, but insects are always a concern. I began by cleaning the dusty fungi room and cycling the boxes of fungi through the freezer.

I alphabetized the collection in Spring 2007 by taking two days to systematically empty cabinets and reshelf boxes in correct order. It was quite a feat of maneuvering to rearrange about 500 boxes within the tiny fungi room. I used part of the grant money to pay my sister and two friends to help since it would have taken me several weeks to do the same job on my own. I also began a database using Specify, a program I was familiar with from working in the vascular plant herbarium.

A wrench was thrown in my ORCA grant plan when I heard the fungi collection was being moved into storage to make room for an office at the museum. The director of the Bean Museum anticipates expanding the museum to twice its current size in the near future. The fungi collection was elected to be moved and won’t be brought back until construction is complete, in five years at the earliest. This made it difficult – but not impossible – to continue working on the collection. First, Dr. Johnson and I cleared out rooms at the Ellsworth building (the storage location for the fungi) and moved the collection over by truck with the help of friends and student employees of the vascular plant herbarium. I intended to either bring a few boxes at a time over to the herbarium or take pictures of the labels and continue expanding the database, but once the collection was moved to the Ellsworth building, it complicated my access to it and increased the time needed to get anything done.

My opinion after corresponding with mycologists in the community is that this fungi collection would be better cared for if donated to a larger institution such as the U.S. National Fungus Collections in Beltsville, MD. I came across many difficulties in completing this ORCA project, but they all stemmed from the fact that there is not a mycological program at BYU, and thus there is not a great need for an accessible fungi collection. It would be a benefit to the scientific community to get the Kent McKnight collection in running order, but I question whether BYU is the ideal place for it. Though I look forward to the expansion of the museum when the Kent McKnight fungi collection will have a large enough room and staff to maintain and care for it, it is also true that BYU has a shrinking Life Sciences department and no mycologically trained faculty. Therefore the collection will continue in disrepair and unfortunately decline in quality and value unless donated to a more appropriate institution or given more financial priority.

I realized my efforts working on the collection were near futile, given that when I graduate from BYU in 2008 the boxes would remain in storage and funding will continue being diverted to other departments. To stay involved with fungi and do something educational with the grant I received, I began researching in the Harold B. Lee library on fungi in land restoration. This is my chosen area of study as I continue in a graduate program. The most interesting of the books I found was “Mycelium Running: how mushrooms can help save the world” by Paul Stamets. He discusses experimental projects where he used fungi spawn that he cultivated to filter harmful bacteria from water, remove and digest petroleum oil from contaminated soil, and restore eroded hillsides, among other amazing projects. I decided to use the remaining portion of my grant money to attend Paul Stamets’ mushroom cultivation seminar on location at his company farm, Fungi Perfecti in Washington.

This was an invaluable and educational experience for me to discover precisely what I plan to do as a career, and to make contacts with like minded people who came to the seminar from around the world. I am grateful to ORCA for the grant I received and the learning experiences that came from planning, submitting, modifying, and completing my project. My mentor Dr. Johnson has been an excellent and understanding guide through this process.