I'm guessing most of you don't give much thought to seaweed, but you should.

Seaweeds do in the sea what trees do on land. If we didn't have seaweeds on a coastline, the coastline would die.

It's Wednesday, December 27th, and yes, it's Science Friday. I'm Saifra producer Charles Burgquist.

The thousands of seaweed species around the world are a key part of our coastal ecosystems,

whether you think of them or not.

We'll look at the world beneath the waves with an author of a guide to, with the

author of a guide to the seaweeds of the world. first the mysterious world of dark fungi.

Here's Cyfry producer Shoshana Bucksbob. The term dark fungi had me hooked as soon as I read about it.

Basically, scientists kept collecting DNA samples of the new fungi species,

but have yet to grow them in a lab or collect a specimen. They haven't for example picked up one of these

dark fungi off a log in the forest. As you can imagine this has created some

intriguing logistical and philosophical questions for my colleges.

To learn more, I spoke with a fungal taxonomist, Dr David Hibbett, Professor of Biology

at Clark University based in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Dr. Hibbit, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you, happy to be here.

Let's start with the very basics.

What are dark fungi?

So dark fungi are fungi that we know exist in the environment because we have DNA sequences

indicate that they're there but we don't have a specimen we don't have a culture so we don't have a specimen, we don't have a culture, so we don't have a physical

organism in hand, but we know that the organisms are there because we can detect

them using environmental molecular biology methods.

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