During the last 165 million years, South America was connected to the southern super continent known as Gondwanaland.  As Gondwanaland began to break up, South America and Australia were bridged by Antarctica, providing a path for the dispersal of many organisms.  Among these organisms were fungi in the genus Cyttaria, the “traveling fungi”, and their host, Nothofagus, the Southern Hemisphere Beech.  This round tree gall fungus has coevolved with its host into two distinct phylogenetic clades, or groupings, since their biogeographic isolation by the separation of the southern continents.  Today, Cyttaria gunnii and Cyttaria septentrionalis are endemic to parts of Australasia, while other species within the same genus, such as Cyttaria darwinii, are only found in South America.  Cyttaria has also traveled to England, but only with the help of Charles Darwin during his exploration of South America!             --R. Holbert