Welcome to Bryn T. M. Dentinger's website!
CONTACT: b.dentinger at kew.org
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The photo on the left is a print from an engraved copperplate (the "iconotype") by Pierre Bulliard (1791) of one of the most well known edible mushrooms, Boletus edulis (Bull.) Fr. (porcino, cep de Bordeaux, SteinPilz, King Bolete, etc.). The middle photo is of me collecting Apterostigma ant nests from underneath a log at the Tiputini Biological Station in the Amazon basin, Ecuador. The one on the right is Alloclavaria purpurea (Fr.) Dentinger & McLaughlin, a conspicuous "coral" mushroom found in coniferous forests.
ABOUT ME
I am currently Acting Head of Mycology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, UK and have been recently given an Honorary Lectureship in the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth Unviersity in Wales. My research has focused primarily on the molecular systematics of mushrooms, especially porcini (Dentinger et al. 2010b) and clavarioid (Dentinger and McLaughlin 2006) fungi, but I have a particular interest in tropical mushroom diversity and the ecology and evolution of interactions between fleshy fungi and mycophilous insects, including the fungus-farming ant mutualism (see Dentinger et al. 2009). My fieldwork has brought me to Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Madagascar, Sarawak (Malaysia), and Vietnam.
EDUCATION & CURRENT AND ONGOING PROJECTS
I graduated high-school from Duluth East (Duluth, MN) in 1996, received by B.A. in Biology (with Honors) in 2000 from Macalester College (St. Paul, MN), and a Ph.D. in 2007 from the McLaughlin Mycology Lab in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Minnesota. I then spent two years at the Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto working on DNA barcoding in mushroom-forming fungi (Dentinger et al. 2010, Dentinger et al. 2011) with Dr. Jean-Marc Moncalvo. During that time I continued to pursue a project on mushroom mimicry in Dracula orchids (Dentinger & Roy 2010) that I conceived during the final year of my Ph.D. The project first received funding from the National Geographic Society in 2007/2008 and then the National Science Foundation in 2009 (-2012), in collabortion with Dr. Bitty Roy. In 2009 I spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Roy at the University of Oregon, serving as Co-PI on the Dracula project. Most of this research is now largely the focus of the Roy lab, particularly Ph.D. candidate Tobias Policha, who took on the bulk of it for his dissertation (see also the RBG Kew Science Directory for more on this project). My research interests are broad and I am pursuing a number of other projects from diversity of UK waxcaps (genus Hygrocybe) to diversity of macrofungi in Sarawak (see project website here: www.sarawakfungi.org) to co-phylogeography of ectomycorrhizal plants and their fungal symbionts in littoral forests in Madagascar. For more information on these and my other projects, please see the RBG Kew Science Directory.
click here to see a list of ACCEPTED SPECIES/NAMES OF PORCINI SENSU STRICTO
PUBLICATIONS
DENTINGER, B.T.M., Didukh, M.Y. Moncalvo, J.-M. (2011). Comparing COI and ITS as DNA barcode markers for mushrooms and allies (Agaricomycotina). PLoS ONE 6(9): e25081. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025081
Tham, L.X., N.L.Q. Hung, P.N. Duong, D.V. Hop, B.T.M. DENTINGER, and Jean-Marc Moncalvo (2011, in press). Tomophagus cattienensis sp. nov., a new Ganodermataceae species from Vietnam: Evidence from morphology and ITS DNA barcodes. Mycological Progress.
DENTINGER, B.T.M., J.F. Ammirati, E.E. Both, D.E. Desjardin, R.E. Halling, T.W. Henkel, P.-A. Moreau, E. Nagasawa, K. Soytong, A.F. Taylor, R. Watling, J.-M. Moncalvo, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2010). Molecular phylogenetics of porcini mushrooms (Boletus section Boletus). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 57:1276-1292.
DENTINGER, B.T.M., and B.A. Roy. (2010). A mushroom by any other name would smell as sweet: Dracula orchids. McIlvainea 19(1):1-13.
DENTINGER, B.T.M., S. Margaritescu, and J.-M. Moncalvo. (2010). Rapid and reliable high-throughput methods of DNA extraction for use in barcoding and molecular systematics of mushrooms. Molecular Ecology Resources 10:628-633.
DENTINGER, B.T.M., D.J. Lodge, A.B. Munkacsi, D.E. Desjardin, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2009). Phylogenetic placement of an unusual coral mushroom challenges the classic hypothesis of strict coevolution in the Apterostigma pilosum group ant-fungus mutualism. Evolution 63(8):2172-2178.
Dickie, I.A., B.T.M. DENTINGER, P.G. Avis, D.J. McLaughlin, and P.B. Reich. (2009). Ectomycorrhizal fungal communities of oak savanna are distinct from forest communities. Mycologia 101(4):473-483.
McLaughlin, D.J., G.J. Celio, M. Padamsee, and B.T.M. DENTINGER. (2008). Cystidial structure in two genera of the Russulales. Botany 86(6):545-550.
Padamsee, M., P.B. Matheny, B.T.M. DENTINGER, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2008). The mushroom family Psathyrellaceae: evidence for large-scale polyphyly of the genus Psathyrella. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 46(2):415-429.
Jenkinson, T.S., G.J. Celio, M. Padamsee, B.T.M. DENTINGER, M. Meyer, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2008). Conservation of cytoplasmic organization in the cystidia of Suillus species. Mycologia 100(4):539-547.
Celio, G.J., M. Padamsee, B.T.M. DENTINGER, K. Josephson, T.S. Jenkinson, E.G. McLaughlin, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2007). Septal pore apparatus and nuclear division of Auriscalpium vulgare. Mycologia 99(5):644-654.
Celio, G.J., M. Padamsee, B.T.M. DENTINGER, R. Bauer, and D.J. McLaughlin. (2006). Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life: Constructing the Structural and Biochemical Database. Mycologia 98(6):850-859.
DENTINGER, B.T.M. and D.J. McLaughlin. (2006). Reconstructing the Clavariaceae using nuclear large subunit rDNA sequences, and a new genus segregated from Clavaria. Mycologia 98(5):746-762.
Harsh, N.S.K., Y.P. Singh, H.K. Gupta, B.M. Mushra, D.J. McLaughlin, and B. DENTINGER. (2005). A new culm rot disease of bamboo in India and its management. Journal of Bamboo and Rattan 4(4):387-398.
Lutzoni, F., ...B. DENTINGER, et al. (2004). Assembling the fungal tree of life: progress, classification, and evolution of subcellular traits. American Journal of Botany 91(10):1446-1480.
Avis, P.G., D.J. McLaughlin, B.C. DENTINGER, and P.B. Reich. (2003). Long-term increase in nitrogen supply alters above-and below-ground ectomycorrhizal communities and increases the dominance of Russula spp. in a temperate oak savanna. New Phytologist 160:239-253.





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