Kathie Hodge
Associate professor
with Kathie Hodge
An associate professor of mycology in the Department of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology, Kathie Hodge directs the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium. "Cornell is an exciting place to work," she says. "Fungi have been studied here since the late 1800s, so Cornell is very rich in mycology resources. However, despite over 120 years of mycology, new species and genera are still to be found in the Ithaca landscape."
Work in Hodge's lab focuses on the systematics of fungi, especially insect pathogens. "We use both modern molecular and classical morphological approaches to understand fungal relationships and make inferences about how they have evolved. We are good at alpha-taxonomy, the branch of systematics in which organisms are described for the first time, given names, and placed on their rightful branches in the tree of life. Although it's rare to find a new species or genus of mammal or bird these days, we think that over 90 percent of fungal species have never been described. There's a surprisingly vast and interesting taxonomic frontier in mycology."
References
Mycology professor Kathie Hodge guides us on a virtual tour of the fungal world in this July 2009 lecture, part of the summer events series sponsored by Cornell's School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions. "Fungi have surprising impacts on us, but perhaps because they tend to be small we don't notice them much," says Hodge. "Some are important human pathogens and cause diseases like athlete's foot. Some help us produce delicious and intoxicating foods and beverages, like blue cheese and beer. Some spoil foods before we can eat them, kill crop plants before harvest, or contaminate seeds with mycotoxins. Some grow in our homes. Others support plants and link whole forests." In her talk, Hodge explores many peculiar details of this ubiquitous and unusual kingdom of life.