Every month the North Texas Mycological Association is trying to implement free Zoom presentations by renown speakers from all across the world to our members as a perk of supporting the club.

Our first Zoom presentation of the year will be offered on Sunday January 8th at 7pm (CST) and we are ecstatic about having Michael Beug as our presenter! Here is a little tidbit of what he will be covering for us: “In this talk, I illustrate the spectacular and diverse world of Ascomycete fungi. You will learn about edibles from morels to truffles, fungal habitats and fungal lifestyles. I describe what Ascomycetes are. You will learn about unusual fungi, some with medicinal applications, some with industrial uses, some that cause plant diseases, some that cure plant diseases, and some that control insects. I will touch on the explosion of new knowledge resulting from cheaper and faster DNA information. I describe how, with coauthors Alan and Arleen Bessette, I came to write the book Ascomycete Fungi of North America (University of Texas Press, 2014). It is the first and only color-illustrated book covering North American Ascomycetes.” If you want to know more about Michael Beug, here is some information on his background:

Michael Beug completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Washington in 1971. After one year teaching at Harvey Mudd College, he spent 32 years at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where he taught chemistry, mycology and organic farming and served for 7 years as Senior Academic Dean and for many years as head of the Environmental Studies Division.
 
Michael started mushrooming after an adult education class taught by Dr. Daniel Stuntz in 1969. He met Kit Scates and Dr Alexander Smith and began photographing fungi in 1972. His photographs now have appeared in well over 50 books and articles on mushrooms. In 1974, he joined the North American Mycological Association (NAMA) and the Pacific Northwest Key Council, a group dedicated to writing macroscopic keys for the identification of fungi. He has served four terms as president of the Pacific Northwest Key Council.
 
In NAMA, he served on the Education Committee, was chair of the Toxicology Committee, chair of the Editorial Committee, and past editor of the Journal McIlvainea. He won the 2006 NAMA Award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology. He regularly writes about mushrooms in Fungi Magazine, McIlvainea, The Mycophile, and Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming. Michael has prepared over two dozen PowerPoint presentations about mushrooms (available free through NAMA, www.namyco.org).
 
He is a coauthor of MycoMatch, a free mushroom identification program covering 4,530 taxa with nearly 7,000 images of over 2,500 taxa (www.mycomatch.com). With coauthors Alan and Arleen Bessette, he wrote Ascomycete Fungi of North America: A Mushroom Reference Guide, University of Texas Press, 2014. He wrote Mushrooms of Cascadia: An Illustrated Key Fungi Press, 2021 featuring 950 species including many newly named species (www.mushroomsofcasacadia.com). 

https://northtexasmycology.org/product/zoom-presentations-members-only/