Esther Mclaughlin

Augsburg biology professor Esther Mclaughlin, with husband Dave and granddaughter

I am one of a rare breed of biologists: I was a botany major in college! I got my B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and then my Ph.D. (in botany, of course) from the same place. This means that I was in Berkeley for those fabulous 60's -- politics, the Vietnam War, rock 'n' roll, free speech and everything. But of course I was a tame, even geeky, grad student the whole time, and married a fellow-botanist.

I then had two children, and stayed at home while my husband started his career at the Univ. of Minnesota, but, starting when my kids were in high school, I took temporary teaching jobs at nearby colleges (Carleton, St. Olaf, and the Univ. of Minn.).
Eventually I ended up at Augsburg where I have been teaching Plant Biology (synomymous with "botany"), Plant Physiology, Introductory Biology, and (would you believe it) Invertebrate Zoology, for the last 13 years.

My research interests changed over the years -- I began as a student of aquatic plant biology, with a Ph. D. dissertation on the genus Callitriche. Then I took an interest (begun but not pursued in grad school) in culturing the larger fungi (mostly mushrooms & their relatives). Some of my research on the tropical fungus Pterula, all collaborative with my husband and his students, has been published in Mycologia and in Canadian Journal of Botany.

Recently Pterula has been shown by DNA sequence analysis to be related to the fungi cultivated by attine [leaf-cutter] ants. You just never know what you're going to learn when you study an organism!

For more on fungi in the genus Pterula, their relatives, and attine ants, see: Biology Photo of the Month-September 2002

Contact information for Dr. Esther McLaughlin:
Campus Box 37
Phone: 330-1074
email: mclaugh@augsburg.edu