Hancock County Naturalists to meet

The Hancock County Naturalists will be hosting speaker Bob Antibus at their monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Oct. 13. The meeting will be held at the Doc Phillips Discovery Center at Oakwoods Nature Preserve, 1400 Oakwoods Lane. The meeting is free and open to the public. Antibus will talk about the collection of macro-fungi at the Kitty Todd Prairie Nature Preserve in Swanton, OH. He will focus on their roles in the ecosystem, habitat relationships, and possible implications of nature conservancy management goals. Antibus, a native of Akron, Ohio, attended Kent State University where he majored in botany. He remained at Kent State to complete a master's degree with Sam Mazzer in fungal taxonomy, spending a summer in Montana and another in Mexico. He then continued studying mycology at Virginia Tech with Orson K. Miller spending three summers at Point Barrow, Alaska completing a Ph.D. on the physiology of ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with the dwarf willow Salix rotundifolia. In 1980 he and his wife moved to Montana where he taught in the Botany Department at the University of Montana before moving to Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. In 1993 the family moved to Bluffton where Bob taught at Bluffton University until 2016. He has studied mycorrhizal fungi in a wide range of ecosystems from arctic tundra in Alaska and Montana, boreal forests in NY state, and tropical forests of Costa Rica. In Ohio, he has monitored fungi in the Kitty Todd Prairie Nature Preserve. He also serves on the Board of the Ohio Mushroom Society and Johnny Appleseed Park District of Allen County. The Hancock County Naturalists, a membership organization, is established for the purpose of furthering the study of the fauna and flora of Hancock County and surrounding area and to participate in selected conservation and educational projects. For more information, contact Jane Riker, 419-306-3697 or emaggin117@aol.com