Hi again,

We are back at INBio following our successful fieldwork. I have to admit that it feels good being dry and warm, but I miss the sounds of the country. Our hotel here is in an old colonial coffee plantation house that has a beautiful garden courtyard, but the traffic noises permeate the old thick garden walls.

Although it rained more than typical and the fungi were not as plentiful as we would have liked, I am satisfied with the trip. Betty and I will now spend three weeks here working at INBio and the University of Costa Rica examining specimens and writing manuscripts.

I have attached photos of two of the key partners in our work here in Costa Rica who did not participate in this expedition. Dr. Roy Halling is Curator of Fungi at the New York Botanical Garden. He is seen in the first slide with Milagro Mata of INBio. Dr. Julieta Carranza, Professor of Mycology at the University of Costa Rica, was photographed giving a lecture during one of the short courses for Central American students and young professors that we have organized though the Costa Rican Fungal Inventory Project.

I attached the 3rd slide to emphasize that fieldwork is only the first stage of our work. The goal of the project is to document and understand the diversity, species composition, and ecology of tropical fungi. We end up spending multiple hours in the lab for every hour spent in the field identifying and describing each species, analyzing the data, and undertaking experiments to understand their biology. The results of all of this work are then published in a variety of formats that reach the diversity of people who want such data. These diverse publics range from other scientists, to land managers, to conservation biologists, to teachers and their students, and to life-long learners.

You can learn more about our work at http://www.nybg.org/bsci/res/hall/costaric.html and http://www.inbio.ac.cr/en/inbio/inb_hongos.htm.

Thank you for joining us on this expedition. We hope that you enjoyed it. Check out the expedition website for the next week or so as additional videos and photos will be posted.

Best regards,

Greg Mueller

Betty Strack