Saprophytic mushrooms, the decomposers, steer the course for proliferating biological communities, shaping and forming the first menus in the food web from dead plants, insects, and other animals. Most gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are wood decomposers, the premier recyclers on the planet; building soils is the primary outcome of the activities of these saprophytic fungi, whose filamentous mycelial networks weave through and between the cell walls of plants.
