Matthew  Foltz

Project Coordinator
Research Lab Technician

Academic Background

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse: M.Sc. 
Oakland University: B.Sc.

Research

Coordinating efforts at Michigan's herbarium as part of the Macrofungi Collections Consortium project. This project is an effort to digitize fungal collection material and to make this information accessible through the web at MycoPortal.org. The project encompasses collections from 35 major university and museums throughout the United States, and includes essentially all of the macrofungal collections (~1.4 million) that have been deposited in U.S. herbaria over the past 150 years. The data generated will allow researchers to address to what extent the diversity and distribution of macrofungi determine the diversity and distributions of the organisms with which they form symbiotic relationships, and further, how the changes in macrofungal diversity and distribution affect those organisms and ultimately human affairs.

I am also interested in fungal systematics, molecular phylogeny, and speciation. I am particularly interested in the Cantharellaceae family in North America and in determining which morphological characters are important at the species level in the genera Cantharellus and Craterellus. My co-authors and I have recently described three new species of Cantharellus in Wisconsin, USA. Two of these new taxa had been masquerading under the nameCantharellus cibarius, a common chanterelle that has only been found in Europe (according to data from DNA sequencing). My research suggests there are several other cryptic species of Cantharellus in the middle and eastern portions of the United States that need to be resolved to develop a more accurate understanding of the genera Cantharellus and Craterellus.

Select publications