Some very preliminary results
Early in the DNA extraction process--differently colored lobsters produce different hues of lobster juice I've gotten some interest recently in what I've been able to accomplish with everyone's samples over the last nearly a year. I've received 31 donations of dried lobster mushroom or uninfected host samples from super generous people and was able to collect further samples of my own in Oregon. Through a combination of "things always take longer than you think" and activities for my thesis, I've only been able to fully process a few samples. My thesis is actually a project about fungus-farming ants, rather than lobster mushrooms, but the two study systems are united by the presence of a fungal parasite in each that are both in the same taxonomic order (so, fairly closely related, in the grand scheme of fungal diversity)-- Hypomyces lactifluorum attacking lobster mushroom hosts, and Escovopsis attacking the fungal crop of ant farmers, both in the ord...