We had the good fortune of connecting with Damon Tighe and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Damon, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
Everyone assumes that we know a lot about how the biological world works. We don’t. We have barely scratched the surface. As of now we have species names for less than 3% of the species on the planet. We are still living in an era of unprecedented novel organism discovery as new tools, like DNA sequencing become cheap and allow us to see differences in organisms we weren’t able to see before. However we are also living in the middle of one of the great extinction events on this planet, so as quickly as we can name new organisms we are losing the named and unnamed ones due to habitat destruction and a myriad of other causes. Mushrooms in Arizona account for one of the major groups of organisms benefiting greatly from DNA Sequencing as it is elucidating new species, helping us understand distributions of described species, and helping us see relationships between mushrooms in Arizona an across the entire continent.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m excited in helping more community scientist probe the landscapes around them to understand them first at what organisms are then and secondly on how this organisms interact as its only through this intimate understanding of the biological pillars we all stand on do we have the potentially to make sustainable communities that can weather the test of time. My current work is the culmination of years as a research scientist at the national labs where I worked on the Human Genome Project, Single Cell Genomics and metagenomic projects and my life long passion as a naturalist that knows one of the biggest hubris breakers is to simply go out to a local park and try to name all of the organisms you find; what you soon recognize is that this simple task could last a life time. The most difficult part of my journey has been how under valued non-human scientific studies are, so learning to be financially savvy because unlike becoming a medical doctor the career pays for itself in the excitement of discovery, community building and not money.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
First thing we’d do is get a beer and a meal at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company and then head up into the high country in the white mountains for multiple days of traversing habitats that no one thinks about when they think about Arizona.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The discovery of new mushroom forming fungal species in Arizona is driven largely by non-academics in the amateur mycology communities. Terri Clements leads a lot of this effort through her shear knowledge of the field, well developed relationships with academics and non-professionals alike.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/damontighe/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damontighe

Other: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=map&user_id=damontighe&verifiable=any

Image Credits
photos by Damon Tighe

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