The Mushroom Hacker: Citizen Scientist Hunts Mushrooms to Advance Study of Fungi | The Regulars

During mushroom season, Alan Rockefeller spends his free time wandering the woods, collecting samples. He takes pieces of fungi back to Counter Culture Labs, a community lab space in Oakland, to identify the species using DNA extraction. He isn’t employed by a research institution, nor paid at all for his efforts. Rockefeller is a remarkably dedicated volunteer, a citizen scientist in the field of mycology — the study of fungi. Rockefeller’s commitment and diligence has led him to identify and name one mushroom scientifically: Psilocybe allenii, a hallucinogenic mushroom from the West Coast. “The data is extremely interesting,” he says of fungal DNA. “You can see where else in the world the same mushroom is existing, and how it fits into all of the other mushrooms, and help uncover new species.” Credit: Nani Walker, Robin Simmonds, and Lauren Schwartzman Read more: https://bit.ly/30LWkZO Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/2Svdkii — The San Francisco Chronicle delivers the Bay Area’s best journalism every day. Our mission is to tell the story of San Francisco — the city whose people change the world. We will inform, inspire and provoke while being honest, fearless and startlingly original. You can support our newsroom by signing up for a membership at http://SFChronicle.com/subscribe.