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A bioluminescent mushroom was discovered in Brazil in 1840 and named Agaricus gardneri (in honor of botanist George Gardner, who discovered it). The species was not observed again until 2009! I read that and thought. “How could they not see it? It glows in the dark!” Then I realized that the Brazilian rainforest must be an intimidating place in the dark. That turned out to be the true story.
To catch the green glow of the bioluminescent mushroom, Desjardin and his long-time research partner in Brazil, Dr. Cassius Stevani, had to “go out on new moon nights and stumble around in the forest, running into trees,” he recalled, wary of nearby poisonous snakes and prowling jaguars.
But he said advances such as digital cameras have made it easier to track down bioluminescent fungi. New cameras allow researchers to photograph mushrooms that they suspect might be bioluminescent in darkened rooms and analyze the photos for a glow (sometimes one that’s not visible to the human eye) within a few minutes, compared to the 30 to 40 minutes required of regular film exposure.
The brave mycologists brought back photographs of the same mushroom, now renamed Neonothopanus gardneri. Read more about it at Science Daily. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Cassius V. Stevani/IQ-USP, Brazil)
Link via YouTube
Jet? Space shuttle? Bullets? Nope. All wrong. It’s fungi. That’s right. Everyday common field-growing fungi. Richard Hammond of the BBC’s popular car show, Top Gear features the fungi in his trivia-and-brains show Invisible Worlds. Captured in slow motion shooting its spores over two meters at over 20,000 G’s, the Pilobolus spores make the astronauts on the space shuttle deal look like right sissies with their measly 4 G’s. Super-slow motion photography captures the astonishing launch in this interesting piece about poop-loving fungi that is the fastest moving thing on the planet.
Artist Jae Rhim Lee wants people to rethink the way they approach death:
I am interested in cultural death denial, and why we are so distanced from our bodies, and especially how death denial leads to funeral practices that harm the environment – using formaldehyde and pink make-up and all that to make your loved one look vibrant and alive, so that you can imagine they’re just sleeping rather than actually dead. The US government recently upgraded formaldehyde from a probable carcinogen to a known carcinogen, so by trying to preserve the body we poison the living.
So I was thinking, what is the antidote to that?
Like most people who contemplate such issues, Lee inevitably arrived at the conclusion that she should train mushrooms to consume her body. And wear a specially-designed suit (pictured above) for that purpose:
I thought I could train a toxin-cleaning edible mushroom to eat my body. These mushrooms, which usually grow on wood and decaying material in the forest, can be trained to grow on pretty much any organic material and break it down. So I started collecting my hair, nails and skin so I could pick the best mushrooms to become Infinity Mushrooms, to recognise and eat my body after I die.
Project Website and Interview -via Boing Boing | Artist’s Website | Photo: Jae Rhim Lee
This picture of “various isolates of ascomycete fungi grown on agar nutrient plates” is from a Tumblr blog called Electric Orchids, which features great photographs of anything to do with biology, from exotic animals to fossils to microscope images. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(Image credit: Dr. David Midgley)
The fungal cells in this picture are so small and hard to detect that they had to be colored with fluorescent dye before they could be recorded. They are attached to algae cells.
The first views suggest that unlike any other fungi known, these might live as essentially naked cells without the rigid cell wall that supposedly defines a fungus, says Tom Richards of the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Exeter in England. He calls these long-overlooked fungi cryptomycota, or “hidden fungi.” Of the life stages seen so far, a swimming form and one attached to algal cells, there’s no sign of the usual outer coat rich in a tough material called chitin, Richards and his colleagues report online May 11 in Nature.
“People are going to be excited,” predicts mycologist Tim James of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who also studies an ancient group of fungi.
But now scientists will have to either redefine what a fungus is, or classify a new group of species that are “almost-fungus.” Read more about it at Wired Science. Link
(Image credit: Meredith Jones)
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Fungi come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and their range of habits and habitats is just as diverse.
It’s fungi’s ability to grow just about anywhere that makes it so amazing. If you name a hostile environment there’s more than likely some form of mushroom or yeast that will not only grow there but prefer it over anywhere else. An extreme version of this is when researchers stuck their instruments into one of the most poisonous places on earth and found not only a species of mushroom growing there but one that actually appears to be feeding on the toxicity. How nasty is this place? Well, all you need to say is one word to shudder at the thought: Chernobyl.
But strangeness and fungi don’t end with radiation-feasting mushrooms, for there are quite a number of them that feast on other things — including animals. Nematophagous fungi, for instance, grow miniscule rings that, if a nematode happens to squirm into one, rapidly contract, trapping the unfortunate lunch … I mean ‘worm.’ If this makes you a bit nervous take a bit of consolation in that the popular oyster mushroom is also a nematode killer – and it’s also tasty, so while it eats them we also eat it.
See some beautiful and scary fungi at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: Wikipedia user Lebrac)
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All you science-lovers on Neatorama should appreciate this great sweater featuring the Periodic Table of Elements. The sleeves feature fungi and bacteria names. The creator made it for her husband, a microbiologist working in the pharmaceutical industry.
