How Fungi Are Breaking The Binary: A Queer Approach To Ecology

As Pride month comes to a close, many people are reflecting on the past, present, and future of the LGBTQIA+ community.

An interdisciplinary group of scientists, researchers, and artists are using queerness as a lens to better understand the natural world, too. It’s a burgeoning field called queer ecology, which aims to break down binaries and question our assumptions of the natural world based on heterosexuality.

For example, there are plenty of examples of same-sex animal pairings in the wild, like penguins, chimps, and axolotls. There are also plants that change sexes, or have a combination of male and female parts, like the mulberry tree.

But perhaps the most queer kingdom of all is fungi. Mushrooms are not easily forced into any type of binary. For example, the Schizophyllum commune, or the split gill mushroom, has 23,000 sexes, making it somewhat of a queer icon in the field of mycology.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Patty Kaishian, incoming curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, about how fungi might help us expand our understandings of sexuality, identity, and hierarchy. They also discuss how queer ecology can help people of all sexualities reconnect with the natural world.

Earlier this year, a baby Przewalski’s horse was born at the San Diego Zoo. But this foal isn’t any ordinary foal, he’s a clone. He’s the product of scientists aiming to save his dwindling species using genetics. This endangered horse species once roamed Europe and Asia, but by the 1960, threats like poaching, capture, and military presence drove the horses to extinction in the wild.

Conservationists raced to save this wild horse through captive breeding programs, but with a population so small, there just wasn’t enough genetic diversity to grow a healthy herd. But with careful genetic management, the Przewalski’s horse’s population is now nearly 2,000 horses strong, and this new foal will one day help boost his species’ genetic diversity even more.

Producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Oliver Ryder, conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, about cloning Przewalski’s horse, and how doing so will infuse genetic diversity into the small population.

Then Davis talks with Dr. Sam Wisely, professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, about how cloning can help other endangered species, like the black-footed ferret, and the ethics involved in cloning.

The story of the CubeSat started with a big problem for one Cal Poly professor.

“It was actually a critical problem for us, but it was a problem that nobody else cared about,” said Jordi Puig-Suari, an Emeritus Professor from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

He co-invented the CubeSat with Bob Twiggs from Stanford.

Puig-Suari is now retired and has spent the last four years sailing around the world with his wife. I talked to him over Zoom from somewhere along that journey.

He takes me back two decades to his time as a professor at Cal Poly where he was hired to develop their aerospace engineering department.

Read the rest of this article at sciencefriday.com.

Last week the world watched as rescuers from across the globe searched for a tiny experimental submersible that had disappeared, carrying five people on a dive to the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. That search turned out, sadly, to be in vain. The Titan submersible is believed to have imploded in the North Atlantic, killing all aboard.

The intersection of design, engineering, and human risk-taking is a recurring theme throughout modern history. One of the finest chroniclers of those tales was Henry Petroski, who died earlier this month at the age of 81. He was a professor of engineering and history at Duke University, and author of many books. Petroski was known for his critical eye and insightful view of various missteps and faults in pursuit of progress—from improving bridge designs for safety to the tragic loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Some called Petroski the “poet laureate of technology” for his prolific writings on everything from the design of bridges to the fabrication of pencils.

In this recording from 2012, Ira Flatow spoke with the late professor Petroski about engineering failures, and humanity’s follies.

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