Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Help my son has a science project to make on pink coral fungus and it cannot spoil, has be free standing, be labeled, and be orginal. I am not finding any ideas can anyone give suggestions?

Hi Tifferella,
Welcome to the Ask an Expert forum. Did you son choose this topic? Is he expected to conduct an experiment, or would it suffice to write a research paper?

Chris

Hi,

I am unsure what you are trying to do. I think you are trying to collect and preserve a large multi-cellular organism so that colors and morphology are preserved indefinitely, a tall order.

Here is a manual for collecting and propagating fungi in general. It is 3.4 Mbytes and loads slowly, so link to it only intentionally:

http://www.spc.int/PPS/SAFRINET/fung-scr.pdf

This reference might be helpful(scroll down webpage to see first page of article)

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-5 ... 0.CO%3B2-R

Another set of ideas:

http://www.nemf.org/files/guidelines/Co ... _study.pdf

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/herbarium.html

http://www.fungibank.csiro.au/topic_5_2_1.htm

http://ilmbwww.gov.bc.ca/risc/pubs/tebi ... her-10.htm

The bottom line here is most advice seems to recommend drying as the best practical method to preserve fungi specimens, but that is a relatively poor method in terms of keeping specimens like they do in their native habitat. Color photographs of undisturbed specimens are very useful. I am not sure how helpful this information will prove, but wish you the best of success in your project.

Best regards,

Barrett Tomlinson