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Hello Declan -
Botanists can study fungi, and mycologists can study plants. This is acknowledged in the description of the kinds of organisms the American Journal of Botany includes in its research articles: "all organisms studied by botanical researchers (including land plants, algae, fungi, lichen, cyanobacteria)". A person who focuses solely on fungi would probably be called a mycologist rather than a botanist, but since there are lots of ways in which fungi and plants interact in nature, there are lots of ways to study both plants and fungi at the same time. For example, a really cool study was just published about a fungus that grows up through a plant and then forms structures at the top of the plant that look almost exactly like the plant's flowers. It's mimicking the look of the flowers to get bees to visit and carry away its spores to infect other plants. Very tricky! If you'd like to see a photo, you can visit this Scientific American article
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-flower-is-really-a-fungus-in-disguise/
Best,
Andrew Schnabel
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This post explains the student's question very well!
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