Mycological Research
In the late 1980s, Chapela did his PhD dissertation research at Cardiff University on the ecology of microbial wood-rotting fungi. He continued research on a number of areas of fungal ecology through the 1990s, as a visiting scholar at various research institutions, private companies, and NGOs, finally settling at UC Berkeley, where he has been on the faculty the Department of Ecosystem Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) since 1996.
He has worked on the symbiosis between leafcutter ants and their cultivated fungi. His research seems to indicate that some leaf-cutter ants have "domesticated" a single lineage of fungi for over 30 million years; Chapela is currently studying this symbiosis from evolutionary and agricultural perspectives, as well as looking for ways to manipulate it.
Read more about this topic: Ignacio Chapela
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