{"id":95170,"date":"2021-02-25T17:09:04","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T23:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=95170"},"modified":"2021-03-10T13:25:09","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T19:25:09","slug":"mushrooms-names-can-hold-the-key-to-life-or-death-yours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/mushrooms-names-can-hold-the-key-to-life-or-death-yours\/","title":{"rendered":"Mushrooms\u2019 names can hold the key to life or death \u2014 yours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Marisa Sloan<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When Dr. Attabey Rodr\u00edguez Ben\u00edtez successfully defended her chemical biology dissertation at the University of Michigan, her colleagues surprised her with an unusual gift: a golden oyster mushroom growing kit.<\/p>\n<p>She plopped the big bag of compressed sawdust between her desk and a humidifier, spritzed it with water and nearly forgot about it&#8230; until enormous, yellow scallops erupted less than a week later. \u201cThe only other [fungus] I have grown is cheese mold, unintentionally!\u201d Ben\u00edtez said. Now, she\u2019s one of a growing number of people who dedicate their free time to navigating the curious world of mushrooms \u2014 and their complicated names.<\/p>\n<p>Mycology is the branch of biology dealing with fungi, including their relationships to one another and use to humans. The process of naming fungi is pretty complicated nowadays, but a small group of experts toil in relative obscurity to ensure that when mycologists around the world talk to one another about a mushroom, they\u2019re speaking the same language.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t always that way. Prior to the development of the current naming system in the mid-18th century \u2014 a hierarchy consisting of kingdom, class, order, genus and species of which children are taught numerous mnemonics \u2014 there were just 5,000 known mushroom species. Many mycologists simply memorized them all.<\/p>\n<p>Now that there are more than two times that number, and likely around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asmscience.org\/content\/journal\/microbiolspec\/10.1128\/microbiolspec.FUNK-0052-2016\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2 to 4 million<\/a> species that remain undiscovered, it has become that much more difficult to regulate the rapidly accumulating names\u2026 and reconcile nomenclature errors from the past few hundred years.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Mushrooms\u2019 names can hold the key to life or death \u2014 yours by MedillReports\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F993216778&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=800&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;dnt=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><i>Marisa Sloan is a health, environment and science reporter at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sloan_marisa\"><i>@sloan_marisa.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Marisa Sloan Medill Reports When Dr. Attabey Rodr\u00edguez Ben\u00edtez successfully defended her chemical biology dissertation at the University of Michigan, her colleagues surprised her with an unusual gift: a golden oyster mushroom growing kit. She plopped the big bag of compressed sawdust between her desk and a humidifier, spritzed it with water and nearly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":95173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,5092],"tags":[3977,5103,5104],"class_list":["post-95170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-spring-2021","tag-field-museum","tag-mushrooms","tag-mycology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mushrooms\u2019 names can hold the key to life or death \u2014 yours - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/mushrooms-names-can-hold-the-key-to-life-or-death-yours\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mushrooms\u2019 names can hold the key to life or death \u2014 yours - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Marisa Sloan Medill Reports When Dr. Attabey Rodr\u00edguez Ben\u00edtez successfully defended her chemical biology dissertation at the University of Michigan, her colleagues surprised her with an unusual gift: a golden oyster mushroom growing kit. 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