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There is an entire ecosystem in a previously-overlooked layer of a rainforest. Between the treetops and the forest floor, falling leaves are caught in a matrix of almost-inivisible filaments of the fungus Marasmius. Jake Snaddon from the University of Oxford has been studying this in-between layer of leaves and fungus.
When Snaddon shifted his focus to these hanging leaves, he soon realised their importance. In every hectare (the size of a rugby pitch, or London’s Trafalgar Square), the fungi hold around 260 kilograms of leaves. They hold 2-3 times more than other epiphytes can, and they’re more evenly dispersed.
These litter-traps are suspended worlds. Snaddon counted around 340 different species of insects and other arthropods among the dead leaves. If he removed the fungi, the number of species in the lower canopy fell by 57 percent, and the total number of individuals fell by 70 percent. That’s a huge figure, especially when you consider that around 60 percent of the canopy’s arthropods live in its lowest parts. Clearly, our knowledge of the rainforest was missing a crucial layer.
Next Snaddon will look at the relationships between the different species of life in the rainforest mezzanine. Link
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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)
Octospora humosa was an obscure spore-shooting fungus, living quietly in patches of moss. Then the Guardian included it in a species-renaming competition, and a 12-year old girl beat 5,000 other entrants by dubbing the fungus “hotlips.”
Brotherton said he hoped the popular competition, now in its second year, would draw people into the natural world and get them looking for these unheralded species, which include the largest sea squirt in Britain, a lichen that thinks it is a mushroom and a sea slug that recycles stings.
The judges thought the name particularly apt, since Octospora is a member of the discomycetes group; the renaming thus creates a “hotlips disco.”
Link. Photo credit: Thomas Læssøe/MycoKey/Natural England
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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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David Dietle wrote a highly entertaining post on Cracked about the 10 Creepy Plants That Shouldn’t Exist. The list starts off with a bang with this one:
#10. Bleeding Tooth Fungus
The bleeding tooth fungus looks kind of like a wad of chewing gum that leaks blood like a rejected prop from The Shining.
They’re also called the strawberries and cream, the red-juice tooth, and the devil’s tooth. Whoever is in charge of naming scary bullshit
seems really insistent that this thing looks like a tooth, while mostly skirting over the fact that it freaking sweats blood.Oh, and they are listed as "inedible," which implies that someone attempted to eat one at some point. On the other hand, the bloodlike substance has anticoagulant and antibacterial properties. It’s nature’s next penicillin! All you have to do is lick it. Go ahead.
Read the entire list here: Link (some text NSFW)
Ever wonder why our body temperature is 98.6 °F (37 °C)? Scientists at Yeshiva University discovered the answer.
Turns out that our normal body temperature is the perfect balance of being warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat all the time to maintain metabolism:
"One of the mysteries about humans and other advanced mammals has been why they are so hot compared with other animals," said study co-author Arturo Casadevall, [...] "This study helps to explain why mammalian temperatures are all around 37° C."
The research builds upon earlier work by Dr. Casadevall showing that the number of fungal species that can thrive and therefore infect an animal declines by 6 percent for every 1° C rise in temperature. This means that tens of thousands of fungal species infect reptiles, amphibians and other cold-blooded animals, but only a few hundred harm mammals. Such protection against fungal infection, Dr. Casadevall has speculated, could have been crucial for the triumph of mammals following the age of dinosaurs.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
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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Why did woolly mammoth go extinct? Scientists discovered that the none-too-smart animal enjoyed – and I quote – "poo-snack":
… a team led by Bas van Geel of the University of Amsterdam found fungus spores deep inside a piece of mammoth dung that can only grow on the outside of dung. Only way that can happen is if the mammoth eats the fungus, which means eating poo. Their work is in press in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
This is the second time evidence has been found that mammoths enjoyed poo-snacks — "coprophagy" to scientists — the first was in 2006. In some ways it’s even more important than the first discovery, though, because it means the initial finding wasn’t a fluke: mammoths made a habit of eating their own excrement.
It may sound gross to you or me, but coprophagia (that’s the fancy scientific word for eating poo) may actually serve a valid purpose:
Microbes that feasted on poo left behind high concentrations of vitamin K, B12, and B7, making mammoth pies a great way to get essential nutrients. That would’ve gone double for any time when food was scarce and/or the animals were stressed and in need of a prehistoric PowerBar.
"The indication that the adult mammoth had eaten feces (its own or that of another’s) is interesting, but not remarkably strange. Young elephants eat the feces of their mother to obtain the necessary bacteria for the proper digestion of the vegetation found on the savanna.
"This behavior may have a marked effect upon the type and function of the intestinal flora. Coprophagy is an important means of making a variety of nutrients synthesized by intestinal microflora available to animals.
Watch slime molds and mushrooms grow in this time-lapse video. I was particularly taken with the Stinkhorn Mushroom, which casts a net! Link
Sandeep Ravindran writes in Popular Science that a Swiss violin maker treated a new violin with a unique fungus. The result was that the new violin beat a Stradivarius in a listening test:
A jury of experts, as well as the conference attendees, judged the tone quality of the violins, and the ultimate winner was “Opus 58″ — one of the fungus-infected violins. 90 of the 180 attendees voted for it, with the Stradivarius coming in second with 39 votes. 113 members guessed that “Opus 58″ was actually the Strad.
The wood in “Opus 58″ was treated with a fungus for the longest time: 9 months. Fungal infections are generally thought to damage wood, but results published by Francis Schwarze last year suggested that some types of soft rot fungi reduced the density of the wood, making it lighter and improving its tonal quality, without impairing its firmness. Fungi may thus help artificially replicate the unusually low density of wood that is thought to have occurred in Stradivarius’ time. The “Little Ice Age” that occurred at this time brought about long winters and cool summers in Central Europe, causing trees to grow slowly and uniformly and creating wood with great tonal qualities.
Image: U.S. Department of the Interior
It’s not bad enough that soon we’ll run out of bluefin tuna, now scientists are saying that we may also lose wheat. The stem rust fungus could wipe out 80% of the world’s wheat as it spread from Africa.
Enjoy your bread while it lasts! Karen Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times has the story of a "time bomb" for wheat:
Crop scientists fear the Ug99 fungus could wipe out more than 80% of worldwide wheat crops as it spreads from eastern Africa. It has already jumped the Red Sea and traveled as far as Iran. Experts say it is poised to enter the breadbasket of northern India and Pakistan, and the wind will inevitably carry it to Russia, China and even North America — if it doesn’t hitch a ride with people first.
"It’s a time bomb," said Jim Peterson, a professor of wheat breeding and genetics at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "It moves in the air, it can move in clothing on an airplane. We know it’s going to be here. It’s a matter of how long it’s going to take."
Though most Americans have never heard of it, Ug99 — a type of fungus called stem rust because it produces reddish-brown flakes on plant stalks — is the No. 1 threat to the world’s most widely grown crop.
A black fungus is spreading across the prehistoric murals in the Lascaux cave in France, and scientists aren’t sure what to do about it. At the moment, the cave is completely sealed in the hopes that the cave "will heal itself," said Marc Gaulthier, head of the Lascaux Caves International Scientific Committtee. The fungus problem is exacerbated by rising temperatures that prevent air from circulating inside the caverns, Gaulthier said.
The paintings are estimated to be between 15,000 and 17,500 years old.
Link – via nagonthelake
(image credit: AP/Pierre Andrieu)
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
One day, Fendy Sutandio of Orimath blog looked at his garden and found this strange "Zombie Hand" fungus. It does look like a zombie’s hand digging itself out of its grave!
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
