Jean Lodge

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D. Jean Lodge identifies and studies the roles of mushrooms in wet tropical forests of the Caribbean Basin. She worked for 26 years as a tropical mycologist for the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Center for Forest Mycology Research, based in Puerto Rico. She retired from the Forest Service in 2018 but is still active in describing new species of mushrooms, mushroom biogeography and evolution in the tropics and helping students with their studies of forest fungal ecology. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia and the curator of the Georgia Museum of Natural History Fungarium in Athens, Georgia. Her published studies include development of methods for survey and inventory fungi in tropical forests, the roles of leaf decomposer mushrooms in accelerating leaf decomposition by retaining and recycling mineral nutrients that are in short supply and reducing soil erosion and sediment loads in streams by tying leaf litter together into mats. She has also worked extensively on the effects of hurricane disturbance and drought on leaf decomposer mushrooms and their ability to slow soil erosion in a wet tropical forest on Puerto Rico.​

 

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