Professor Donald H. Pfister in collaboration with Matthew Smith, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, are developing a study of the fungi, at the extreme of the continent in the environmentally fragile region around Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. It is based on a wonderfully detailed diary by Roland Thaxter, a Harvard biologist/mycologist who traveled in 1906 to Punta Arenas. This diary allowed Professor Pfister and Doctor Smith to determine the locations, seasonality and plant associates of some of these rare and infrequently collected species. Thaxter secured, through several months of collecting around Punta Arenas, a series of collections of fungi that today represents unique examples of the biota. In the Spring of 2008 with support of a DRCLAS Faculty Research Grant, Pfister and Smith spent two weeks in Southern Chile and recollected several of the  species that Thaxter encountered. While not all the species collected by Thaxter were recovered several significant finds will be analyses in the laboratory and will further the knowledge of the distribution of fungi in the southern hemisphere.  Mycological records are sparse for this area and this work will be important to further the understanding of the diversity of organisms in these special habitats.  Few studies have undertaken to examine and document mycorrhizal fungi or underground fungal diversity in /Nothofagus/ forests in southern South America such studies of fungal biology and interactions can help inform forest practices in the future.

Participating Harvard faculty: Donald H. Pfister, Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany and Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium
Collaborator: Matthew Smith, Farlow Herbarium, Harvard University