As was mentioned in Chapter 1, the extent of fungal diversity is vast yet lies in highly uncharted territories; there is simply so much we still don’t know! Although there are millions of undiscovered species, there are also species that have such different sexual and asexual forms that they are wrongly labeled as two separate entities. Scientists are improving their methods, leading to a better understanding of how they should be classified. The chapter goes through the major players in the fungal kingdom, showing what differentiates the phyla.

Chapter 2 starts from the beginning of the universe, detailing how our little plot of space was created and why its conditions were crucial to making it what it is today. To walk you through, 13.77 billion years ago, everything began with the Big Bang. As this novel thing called “time” progressed, we see the creation of the first atoms (hydrogen) and, depending on the density of certain spots in space, small variations overtime could become much more exaggerated and form galaxies. Nuclear fission in stars made new elements, providing us with the chemical evolution that later spawned life. Some of these, mostly iron and silicates, formed Earth 4.5 billion years ago. Both some radioactive elements as well as the impact from Theia (the planet that hit us and created the moon) melted much of the iron and gives us our molten iron core. This is why we have the magnetosphere protecting us from solar wind and along with the ozone stopping UV-C (germicidal radiation) at about 35k altitude. Without it, living cells wouldn’t be able to exist. Additionally, our planet is a “Goldilocks Planet,” as it is in such a position that it is not too hot nor too cold for life. Our axis provides us with seasons, and our moon provides tidal effects in water and rock. Without all this, life would be unlikely to have formed all those 3.5 billion years ago…

Over the last few months, I’ve been looking into various grad school programs and labs that fit my interests. I managed to find one that I really like and the PI already told me to apply! I am keeping my fingers crossed, because I genuinely want the position but I still won’t know for some time if it’ll come to fruition. Anyways, while we were chatting, I asked him for book recommendations, and he gave me the title of the textbook he uses for his class: 21st Century Guidebook to Fungi 2nd Edition. Like the good little student I am, I purchased the textbook and brought it with me to Honduras to start cracking into. Since mycology is hugely understudied (and I need a more foolproof way to take notes here given my original notebook got a bit waterlogged from an unexpected and extremely sudden downpour), I figured I’d write little summaries of each chapter here on the world wide web.