INTRODUCTORY MYCOLOGY FOR THE CURIOUS NATURALIST Week 3: May 14 Ecological Functions of Fungi Bill Bakaitis class download 4/15/19 As members of the Fifth Kingdom, Fungi are essential to the integrated systematic functioning and health of our planets ecosystem. In this presentation we will briefly sketch in a few basic concepts necessary in general to understand the dynamic, emergent, complex, self-regulation of a healthy system. Following this we will look more specifically at the some of the various ways fungi serve/assist in the role of system regulators. These basic ideas are conceptual: I have therefor prepared a few outlines and drawings which I hope will assist in advancing the material I wish to share. There will be plenty of slides of nature and mushrooms, but if you are the type of person who would like to have a deeper grasp of the Natural World, you may wish to print out the following outlines and drawings and bring them with you to this talk, which will be the most conceptual of the four in this series. We will not be looking at the ecological consequences of commercial collection of Mushrooms in this presentation, but if interested in this problem, you may wish to read my critical assessment which I was asked to prepare for Mycophile, the Newsletter of NAMA, The North American Mycological Association. http://www.namyco.org/docs/MycophileJulyAug2013.pdf (Thoughts on Mushroom Foraging pp 16-19… and while you are there, you might have a look at Larry Evans brief article p. 13 on the role of fungal hyphae in sequestering carbon, an idea which will be discussed in this week’s presentation.) .