The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 2022.

Award & Honors

Ken Wurdack is the recipient of the National Museum of Natural History’s 2020 Science Achievement Award. NMNH began awarding Science Achievement Awards in 2003. The awards recognize exceptional scientific publications in natural history. In close consultation with the museum’s Senate of Scientists, an interdisciplinary review committee recognized the outstanding work of staff scientists for five scientific papers and a book each published in 2020. The awards were announced during a virtual NMNH All-Science meeting on November 10, 2021.

Wurdack was recognized for his co-authored paper, “Pseudoflowers produced by Fusarium xyrophilum on yellow-eyed grass (Xyris spp.) in Guyana: A novel floral mimicry system?” (Fungal Genetics and Biology 144: 103466; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fgb.2020.103466). The paper was written by Imane Laraba, Susan P. McCormick, Martha M. Vaughan, Robert H. Proctor, Mark Busman, Michael Appell, Kerry O'Donnell, Frederick C. Felker, M. Catherine Aime, and Kenneth J. Wurdack. 

The paper presents a novel plant-fungus association where a newly described parasitic fungus, Fusarium xyrophilum, produces “fake flowers” that mimic its hostplant’s flowers. These pseudoflowers are apparently adaptive to deceive pollinators which spread fungal spores and facilitate outcrossing (bringing together mating types). It is very different from any previously described fungal floral mimicry, especially in the plant and fungal species involved, with the pseudoflowers being composed of fungal tissues rather than host-plant modifications. The paper uses morphological, genomic, and biochemical data to support the ecological narrative, and has captured the attention of the popular science press.