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December 26, 2022 - January 29, 2023
Plants only made it out of the water around 500 million years ago because of their collaboration with fungi, which served as their root systems for tens of million years until plants could evolve their own.
After humans, the animals that form some of the largest and most complex societies on Earth are leafcutter ants.
Over the last fifty years, the most deadly disease ever recorded – a fungus that infects amphibians – has been spread around the world by human trade. It has driven ninety species of amphibian to extinction and threatens to wipe out over a hundred more.
Penicillin, a compound that could defend fungi from bacterial infection, turned out to defend humans as well.
Sixty per cent of the enzymes used in industry are generated by fungi, and 15 per cent of all vaccines are produced by engineered strains of yeast.
Antiviral compounds produced by fungal mycelium reduce colony collapse disorder in honeybees. Voracious fungal appetites can be deployed to break down pollutants such as crude oil from oil spills, in a process known as ‘mycoremediation’. In ‘mycofiltration’, contaminated water is passed
The relationship between plants and fungi gave rise to the biosphere as we know it and supports life on land to this day, but we seemed to understand so little. How did these relationships arise? How do plants and fungi communicate with one another? How could I learn more about the lives of these organisms?
What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find, and what we find when we actually look.
Oat flakes marked major urban hubs and bright lights represented obstacles such as mountains – slime moulds don’t like light.
As we do so, some of the vexed hierarchies that underpin modern thought start to soften. As they soften, our ruinous attitudes towards the more-than-human world may start to change.
However, it transpired that the chemicals were actually made by fungi that lived in the leaves of the plant.
To talk about individuals made no sense any more. Biology – the study of living organisms – had transformed into ecology – the study of the relationships between living organisms.
Like the orchids that mimic the appearance of sexually receptive female bees, truffles provide a depiction of animal tastes – an evolutionary portrait-in-scent of animal fascination.
Our eyes can distinguish several million colours, our ears can distinguish half a million tones, but our noses can distinguish well over a trillion different odours. Humans can detect virtually all volatile chemicals ever tested.
Mustard smells mustardy because of bonds between nitrogen, carbon and sulphur. Fish smell fishy because of bonds between nitrogen and hydrogen. Bonds between carbon and nitrogen smell metallic and oily.3
In this way, small causes can ripple into large effects: human noses can detect some compounds at as low a concentration as 34,000 molecules in one cubic centimetre, the equivalent of a single drop of water in
A mycelial network is one large chemically sensitive membrane: a molecule can bind to a receptor anywhere on its surface and trigger a signalling cascade that alters fungal behaviour.
Agarwood, or oudh, is a fungal infection of Aquilaria trees found in India and south-east Asia and one of the most valuable raw materials in the world. It is used to make a scent – dank nuts, dark honey, rich wood – and has been coveted at least since the time of the ancient Greek physician Dioscorides.
Truffles – like many other highly prized fungal fruiting bodies – are their parent fungus’s least sophisticated channels of communication.
Fusion between hyphae is the linking stitch that makes mycelium mycelium, the most basic networking act.
Our descriptions warp and deform the phenomena we describe, but sometimes this is the only way to talk about features of the world: to say what they are like, but are not.
Mycelium is ecological connective tissue, the living seam by which much of the world is stitched into relation.
We would see sprawling, interlaced webs strung through the soil, through sulphurous sediments hundreds of metres below the surface of the ocean, along coral reefs, through plant and animal bodies both alive and dead, in rubbish dumps, carpets, floorboards, old books in libraries, specks of house dust and in canvases of old master paintings hanging in museums. According to some estimates, if one teased apart the mycelium found in a gram of soil – about a teaspoon – and laid it end to end, it could stretch anywhere from a hundred metres to ten kilometres.
In one experiment, Boddy allowed a wood-rotting fungus to grow within a block of wood. She then placed the block on a dish. Mycelium spread radially outwards from the block in all directions, forming a fuzzy white circle. Eventually the growing network encountered a new block of wood. Only a small part of the fungus touched the wood, but the behaviour of the entire network changed. The mycelium stopped exploring in all directions. It withdrew the exploratory parts of its network, and thickened the connection with the newly discovered block. After a few days, the network was unrecognisable. It
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The mycelium appeared to possess a directional memory, although the basis of this memory remains unclear.
However, mycelium quickly outgrows the swarm analogy because all the hyphal tips in a network are connected to one another.
From the point of view of the network, mycelium is a single interconnected
Researchers at the Unconventional Computing Lab at the University of the West of England have used slime moulds to calculate efficient fire evacuation routes from buildings.
By growing a dense network, mycelium can increase its capacity for transport, but dense networks aren’t good for exploring over large distances. Sparse networks are better for foraging over large areas, but have fewer interconnections and so are more vulnerable to damage. How do fungi juggle this kind of trade-off while exploring a crowded rot-scape in search of food?
Mycelium overproduces links. Some turn out to be more competitive than others. These links are thickened. Less competitive links are withdrawn, leaving a few mainline highways. By growing in one direction while pulling back from another, mycelial networks can even migrate through a landscape.
How does one part of a mycelial network ‘know’ what is happening in a distant part of the network? Mycelium sprawls, yet must somehow be able to stay in touch – with itself.
To monitor the behaviour of Panellus mycelium, Olsson grew cultures in dishes in the lab, and placed two of them, glowing, in a perfectly dark box under constant conditions. He left them alone for a week with a camera sensitive enough to detect their bioluminescence taking pictures every few seconds. In the timelapse video, two unconnected mycelial cultures grow outwards into the shape of irregular circles in their separate dishes, glowing more intensely in the middle than at their edges. After several days – about two minutes of video – there is a sudden shift. In one of the cultures, a wave
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Fungi, like plants, are decentralised organisms. There are no operational centres, no capital cities, no seats of government. Control is dispersed: mycelial co-ordination takes place both everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. A fragment of mycelium can regenerate an entire network, meaning that a single mycelial individual – if you’re brave enough to use that word – is potentially immortal.
The light propagated across the wounded network as it had before, but the signal did not spread to its neighbour. Some kind of rapid communication system had to be operating within the network itself. Olsson became increasingly preoccupied by the question of what this might be.
Mycelium is how fungi feed. Some organisms – such as plants that photosynthesise – make their own food.
The difference between animals and fungi is simple: animals put food in their bodies, whereas fungi put their bodies in the food.
Mycelium decants itself into its surroundings, but its growth pattern isn’t infinitely variable.
Some grow into ephemeral puffs that don’t range beyond their food source and could fit on a single speck of house dust.
No matter where fungi grow, they must be able to insinuate themselves within their source of food.
The word "insinuate" in this context means to find a way to get into or close to something, often in a subtle or covert way
One study estimated that if a hypha was as wide as a human hand, it would be able to lift an eight-tonne school bus.
Small bladders filled with cellular building materials arrive at the tip from within, and fuse with it at a rate of up to 600 a second.
This is insane growth! The slowest fungi growth seems faster than RelicX for sure.
A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history, and is a helpful reminder that all life forms are in fact processes, not things. The ‘you’ of five years ago was made from different stuff than the ‘you’ of today. Nature is an event that never stops. As William Bateson, who coined the word ‘genetics’, observed, ‘We commonly think of animals and plants as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing.’
When hyphae felt together to make mushrooms, they rapidly inflate with water, which they must absorb from their surroundings – the reason why mushrooms tend to appear after rain. Mushroom growth can generate an explosive force. When a stinkhorn mushroom crunches through an asphalt road, it produces enough force to lift an object weighing 130 kilograms.
‘Women Gathering Mushrooms’ is an example of musical polyphony. Polyphony is singing more than one part, or telling more than one story, at the same time. Unlike the harmonies in a barbershop quartet, the voices of the women never weld into a unified front. No voice surrenders its individual identity. Nor does any one voice steal the show. There is no front woman, no soloist, no leader. If the recording was played to ten people and they were asked to sing the tune back, each would sing something different.
Mycelium is polyphony in bodily form. Each of the women’s voices is a hyphal tip, exploring a soundscape for itself. Although each is free to wander, their wanderings can’t be seen as separate from the others. There is no main voice. There is no lead tune. There is no central planning. Nonetheless, a form emerges.
embodiment
Hyphae can come together to form elaborate structures.
Grapes and woody grape vines are made of different types of cell.
Cut up a mushroom and you’ll see that it is made of the same type of cell as mycelium: hyphae.
It sounds like you are describing the differences between plant and fungal cells. Grapes and woody grape vines are both made up of plant cells, which are a type of cell found in all plants. Plant cells have a cell wall that provides structural support, and they also contain chloroplasts, which are organelles that are responsible for photosynthesis. In contrast, mushrooms are made up of fungal cells, which are a type of cell found in all fungi. Fungal cells do not have a cell wall and do not contain chloroplasts. Instead, they have a cell membrane and a nucleus, which are also found in plant and animal cells.
Many species of fungus form hollow cables of hyphae known as ‘cords’ or ‘rhizomorphs’. These range from slim filaments to strands several millimetres thick that can stretch for hundreds
