Fungi occupy nearly every environment and perform ecological functions that remain remarkably understudied. Our lab combines environmental sampling, culture-based approaches, molecular identification, and experimental screening to discover fungi and investigate the traits that allow them to persist, interact, and function across diverse environments. A major resource for this work is our growing living culture collection, which contains thousands of fungal isolates collected from plants, soils, insects, and other environmental substrates.

We use this diversity to experimentally screen fungi for unusual ecological and functional traits. One area of ongoing research examines fungal interactions with emerging environmental contaminants, including microplastics. By screening large numbers of environmental isolates, we have identified fungi capable of growing in the presence of plastics and forming macroscopic fungal-plastic aggregates in aquatic environments. We are investigating the mechanisms underlying these interactions and their potential to concentrate, transform, or facilitate the removal of persistent contaminants from water.

We also study fungi associated with animals and other complex microbial communities. Recent work examining the culturable fungal communities associated with mosquitoes has revealed diverse fungal assemblages and provides experimental systems for investigating interactions among fungi, bacteria, and their animal hosts. More broadly, our culture collection allows us to move from documenting environmental diversity to experimentally testing the ecological functions of individual isolates. By combining biodiversity discovery with high-throughput phenotypic screening, we aim to uncover previously unrecognized fungal traits and understand how fungal diversity translates into ecological function.

A: Sclerostagonospora rosae. B: Epicoccum sp. C: Nothophoma sp. D: Sporobolomyces ruberrimus. E: Phragmocamarosporium sp. F: Magnibotryascoma sp. G: Penicillium chrysogenum. H: Fusarium sp. I: Papiliotrema flavescens. J: Sclerostagonospora rosae K: Setoarthopyrenia chromolaenae. L: Penicillium scabrosum. M: Paraconiothyrium sp. N: Pestalotiopsis sp. O: Paraphaeosphaeria neglecta. P: Filobasidium magnum. Q: Vishniacozyma pyri R: Rhodosporidiobolus colostri. Image by Bailey Pelt (Valenzo et al., 2025)