Registration for the MST's 2024 Cain Foray is open for the initial block of 50 tickets.
The Cain Foray is the MST's annual weekend of mushrooming in the wilderness. Named after founding member Dr. Roy Cain and first held in 1975, this year will be the 46th Cain Foray.
This year's Cain Foray will be held at the Lumina Resort east of Huntsville in the District of Muskoka.
A second block of 30 tickets will be opened for registration on Saturday August 17th at noon.
The Cain Foray weekend includes:
Barbecue reception on Friday evening
Keynote speaker or workshop
Guided forays on Saturday and on Sunday morning
Informative talks on mushrooms
Beach bonfire on Saturday evening
Dinner on Friday, all meals on Saturday, and breakfast on Sunday
Use of the resort's amenities including canoes, waterfront, pool, shuffleboard and scenic hiking trails
The Cain Foray is an intermediate-level event which requires some knowledge about mycology and how to begin identifying species. In the past, new members and those who are new to species identification have found it difficult to participate in the Cain.
In previous years there was one single charge per person for on-site options at the Cain Foray, and this charge included accommodations.
For on-site options, the MST now charges only a registration fee per person. Participants choosing an on-site option will pay for their accommodations directly to Lumina Resort when they arrive and check in on September 27th.
Off-site participants do not need to pay the resort.
Mary Catherine Aime's presentation Introduction to Rust Fungi is now available to MST members to watch on the meetings video page.
In terms of species numbers and ubiquity, rust fungi are an incredibly successful lineage. Together, the more than 7000 described species form the largest known group of plant pathogens, while also having incredibly complex life cycles. This talk will explore the biology of these fascinating organisms and discuss the contributions that molecular systematics have made to our understanding of their evolution.
Cathie Aime is Professor of Mycology, Department of Botany & Plant Pathology and Director of the Arthur Fungarium and Kriebel Herbarium at Purdue University. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University under the guidance of Orson K. Miller, Jr., and conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford under Lorna Casselton. Cathie’s research combines expeditionary field work and traditional approaches with molecular genetics and multi-omics approaches to understand fungal diversity and evolution. Areas of specialization include tropical basidiomycetes, systematics of early diverging basidiomycete lineages (including smuts and yeasts), evolution of rust fungi, and epidemiology of tropical tree diseases. Cathie is a past Managing Editor of the journal Mycologia and is currently President of the Mycological Society of America and Vice President of the International Commission on the Taxonomy of Fungi. Cathie is a fellow of the Mycological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Explorer’s Club, and the Linnean Society of London.
As part of the MST's membership in the Myco-Consortium series of Zoom talks, MST members are invited to join the presentation on Sunday, May 19th at 11:00am ET:
Orbiliomycetes: a diverse, species-rich group of inoperculate discomycetes with fascinating morphology and peculiar ecology
A talk by Hans-Otto Baral Sunday May 19th, 11:00am ET
The Orbiliomycetes are a class of ascomycetes which belongs to the first which produced ascomata. It only includes one family, Orbiliaceae, with 10 genera and around 500 described species. Among them, the genus Orbilia is presently the most species-rich with around 415 species. Morphologically, the class is characterized by very small disc- or bowl-shaped fruiting bodies, usually 0.2–2 mm in diameter, with a whitish or reddish to yellowish or rarely brown to black color, and by ascospores containing a spore body, a refractive vacuolar organelle that only occurs in this class, and by a holoblastic hyphomycetous anamorph. Ascospores, spore bodies and the conidia of the anamorph develope highly diverse shapes. Spore bodies are not persistent in herbarium material and require study when still alive. The asci are always inamyloid and capable of active spore discharge, and vary between 8- and 128-spored. The species occur worldwide on dead wood and bark but also on herbaceous and fungal substrates. Many species are drought-tolerant, therefore, the highest species numbers have been recorded in arid areas. The neglect of this ecological niche is the main reason for the high number of newly described taxa in our monograph. In addition to the saprotrophic lifestyle, catching nematodes, rotifers, amoebas and even small insects is known in some species.
About Hans-Otto Baral
Hans-Otto Baral got interested in fungi through the ‘Pilzverein Stuttgart’, a mycological association in which also his father was a member. At the University of Tübingen under Franz Oberwinkler he made his diploma on the Sarcoscypha species complex. Later he concentrated on inoperculate discomycetes and, after presenting together with German Krieglsteiner a survey of the species known in Germany, published on various genera, including a taxonomic clarification around Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, the cause of the ash dieback disease. In 2016 he covered the non-lichenized discomycetes in a survey (‘syllabus’) of the families of ascomycetes. Various projects were done in collaboration with institutional and amateur colleagues world-wide. In 1992 he published a methodological paper about his so-called "vital taxonomy", which led to the monographic study of Orbiliomycetes as an exemplification of the taxonomic importance to study fungal cells in the living state.
