NHMU mycologist Bryn Dentinger on the mysterious world of fungi

Today on “In the Hive,” we venture into the forest with Dr. Bryn Dentinger, curator of mycology for the Natural History Museum of Utah and associate professor of biology at the University of Utah. Dentinger says that fungi, as a category, are probably most easily defined by what they are not: neither plants nor animals. He describes the somewhat mysterious subterranean fungal networks connecting trees together in the forest (the “Wood Wide Web”) that allow the transfer of carbon, nitrogen and other nutrients between individual trees. And he talks about the joys of mushroom hunting and foraging from the wild.