Faculty/Staff Detail

Timothy J. Baroni, Biological Sciences Department, was a co-author on an article “The Wild Edible Mushroom Pleurocollybia cibaria from Peru is a Species of Gerhardtia in the Lyophyllaceae (Agaricales),” recently published in Cryptogamie, Mycologie. This wild edible mushroom is widely collected and a highly prized commodity sold in the Peruvian markets. Co-authors included: P. Brandon Matheny and Marisol Sánchez-García, University of Tennessee; Andriana Simoni, Hudbay Minerals, Lima Peru; María Holgado Rojas, Universidad Nacional de San Antonia Abad del Cusco, Peru; and, Genevieve M. Gates, University of Tasmania, Australia. Baroni was invited to help sort out the taxonomy of this mushroom because he and a former student, Nicole Bocsusis ’07, had published in 2008 an article, with two other co-authors and researchers from the USDA Forest Service, in the journal Mycotaxon describing a new species of Pleurocollybia from the Maya Mountains in Belize. In that paper, they also reviewed species placed in the genus Pleurocollybia on a global scale.