Abstract

Thinking about fungi makes the world look different. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. Fungi invite us to examine many of our well-worn concepts – from individuality to intelligence – and raise a multitude of fascinating questions for researchers working to make sense of the living world, particuarly those thinking about plants. In this seminar, Merlin will explore the remarkable abilities of fungi and plants to stike up relationships and outline some of the outstanding questions and challenges facing researchers today, including a discussion of electrical signalling and communication within fungal networks.

Merlin is an ecologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation.

Contact reception@plantsci.cam.ac.uk for a Zoom link prior to a talk if you are not on our mailing list. Due to having to go online, we are restricting the talks to University of Cambridge and alumni to keep them as informal as possible.