I want to echo your praise of Matt Meselson. In an earlier life he helped investigate something called yellow rain in Vietnam. This was in the time of the American war on Vietnam, and the local people were complaining about toxic yellow stuff raining down from the sky and making them sick. Yellow rain seemed very much like other nasty things the Americans were spraying over the countryside. The Nixon administration took up the issue, verified that the yellow material did indeed contain three potent toxins, but they blamed it on the Soviet Union, said the Soviets were supplying it to Communist sympathizers in Southeast Asia.

Meselson went to investigate and, honest scientist that he was, his group discovered and reported that yellow rain was actually bee droppings. Seems the local bees sometimes would swarm in great numbers and, from an altitude where they couldn’t easily be seen from the ground, defecate in unison.

Oh, and Jennifer, you’ll be pleased to know that the toxins in yellow rain are mycotoxins, the products of your beloved fungi.