Faculty/Staff Detail

Timothy J. Baroni, Biological Sciences Department, with co-authors Bradley R. Kropp, Utah State University, Vera S. Evenon, Denver Botanical Gardens, and Markus Wilhelm, Allschwil, Switzerland, published a peer-reviewed paper titled “Cercopemyces crocodilinus, a New Genus and Species Related to Ripartitella, is Described from North America” in the September/October issue of the journal Mycologia. This new mushroom is associated with mountain mahogany shrubs in the arid mountainous regions of Utah and Colorado. Baroni coined the genus name after the Greek mythological characters, the Cercopes. The species name, crocodilinus, indicates the thick scaly skin found on the cap of the mushrooms. The authors noted that to find such a robust fungus in an arid ecosystem is unusual.