Fungi Archives - The Sciku Project

April 6, 2023November 22, 2024

If A Tree Talks in a Forest by James Penha

hear trees shoot the breeze
take the forest floor, fungal
roots confabulate
by James Penha

“The Last of Us” television series has energized discussions and imaginings of mushroom networks, but I prefer to consider in this poem not monsters but the beneficent “wood-wide web” that forester Peter Wohlleben describes in “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World”. That book explores how trees communicate and form alliances via their roots and associated fungi.

I myself was first exposed to this idea not from Wohlleben nor from scientific treatises, but from Richard Powers’ novel “The Overstory”, itself inspired by Wohlleben and the complementary work of Suzanne Simard.

Further reading:

‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers, Norton Books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393356687

‘Finding the Mother Tree’ by Suzanne Simard, Penguin Random House: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602589/finding-the-mother-tree-by-suzanne-simard/

‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books: https://www.peterwohllebenbooks.com/the-hidden-life-of-trees

‘The German Forester Who Wants the World to Idolize Trees’, Robert Moor, The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-german-forester-who-wants-the-world-to-idolize-trees

‘The Real Zombie Fungus That Inspired HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’’, Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-real-zombie-fungus-that-inspired-hbos-the-last-of-us-180981514/

‘The Social Life of Forests’, Ferris Jabr, The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html

‘‘Mother Trees’ Are Intelligent: They Learn and Remember’, Richard Schiffman, Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-trees-are-intelligent-they-learn-and-remember/

‘We Asked a Mycologist About The Last of Us and It Got Weird’, Bria McNeal, Esquire: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a42760795/last-of-us-fungus-cordyceps-mycologist/

Author bio:

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits TheNewVerse.News, an online journal of current-events poetry. You can find out more about James’ poetry on his website https://jamespenha.com and catch up with him on Twitter @JamesPenha

Enjoyed James’ sciku? Check out more of his sciku here: ‘Quantumku‘, ‘DNAncient’, ‘Air-Gen-Ku’, ‘Boys Whale Be Boys’, and ‘Down Dog’.

January 6, 2022January 5, 2022

Wood Wide Web by Gauri Sirur

Fungal filaments
Humming under forest floor
Trees communicate.
By Gauri Sirur

Trees communicate with each other through an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi. The fungal strands colonize the tree roots, and form a web connecting the roots to each other.

The relationship between the fungi and trees is usually symbiotic. The fungi take a share of the sugars that the trees produce during photosynthesis. In return, the trees receive nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen that the fungi synthesize from the soil.

Through the network, trees share food — carbon-rich sugars, nitrogen, and phosphorous — with other trees. They also send out warning messages about predators such as aphids and caterpillars. Or about pathogen attacks. This buys their neighbors time to activate their defenses.

All is not sugar and spice, however. Both trees and fungi try to extract the maximum amount of nutrition from the other while giving the minimum in return.

Trees are more likely to help their kin than an unrelated tree. Or to release toxic substances to harm an unwanted neighbor.

Dr. Suzanne Simard, a scientist at the University of British Columbia, discovered the fungal network in 1997. She dubbed it the “Wood Wide Web.”

Wildfire’s Secrets

Hidden harm of smoke.
Microbial long-haul flights.
Lurking, infecting.

Wildfires cause huge amounts of long-term harm, including human, other animal and plant deaths, habitat loss, property and infrastructure destruction, the loss of carbon reservoirs and increased chances of flooding and landslides. Small airborne particles in smoke can be inhaled and cause fatal problems within the respiratory system, whilst the high levels of carbon monoxide produced can result in long-term brain damage, heart problems and even suffocation.

Yet researchers are revealing a new potential health threat as a result of wildfires – some microbes and fungi known to cause human infections are able to survive in the smoke plumes. Wildfires disturb soils causing these microbes to become airborne. Within the smoke the microbes ‘travel’ on particulate matter which is likely to protect them from ultraviolet radiation.

Kobziar & Thompson (2020) argue that the ability of microbes to survive in smoke plumes means that wildfires could play a role in geographical patterns of infection and that more research is needed to understand this threat. Particulate matter from wildfire smoke has been found to travel inter-continental distances. Those living close to wildfires, and even more so those firefighters working on the front lines are likely to be most at risk to such microbes – the US Centre for Disease Control has already stated that firefighting is an at-risk profession for coccidioidomycosis, a fungal infection also known as Valley fever.

The researchers argue that too little is currently known about microbe survival and spread in wildfire smoke. Essential questions remain, the answers to which will only be more important as the likelihood of wildfires increases as a result of climate change.

Original research: Kobziar & Thompson, 2020, Science, ‘Wildfire smoke, a potential infectious agent’ https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.abe8116

March 27, 2018March 27, 2018

Crop blighter

Rice blast: crop blighter.

Inhibiting one protein

stops the fungal spread.

Up to 30% of rice crop is destroyed by rice blast every year, causing huge welfare and economic costs. Sakulkoo et al (2018) have found that inhibiting a single protein enzyme in the fungus stops the spread of the blight through a rice plant.

The fungus’s mitogen-activated protein Pmk1 plays a role in suppressing its host’s immune system and controls the ability of the fungus to move from one rice cell to another. By inhibiting Pmk1’s kinase the fungus is trapped within the infected rice cell and is unable to spread and infect the rest of the rice plant. This latest discovery could point the way towards new rice blast control methods, resulting in increased food security and economic development.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0892

March 13, 2018May 20, 2021

Reservoir or predator

African clawed frog –

reservoir or predator

of the fungal blight?

Amphibian populations worldwide are being devastated by a fungal infection (known as chytrid or Bd). As an invasive species and carrier of the fungal infection African clawed frogs are often blamed for the spread of chytrid and the current conservation crisis.

Research by Wilson et al (2018) suggests the story is more complicated than it at first seems though. Field studies in California suggest a 10% level of Bd infection in the frogs, with infected individuals having very low levels of infection. Additionally, larval clawed frogs appear to eat the Bd zoospores and may therefore actually be helping to reduce the negative impact and spread of the fungus. Unfortunately the study also suggests that the frog larvae also eat Daphnia, which are another predator of the Bd zoospores.

This latest research adds to growing evidence suggesting that African clawed frogs may not be as guilty as they seemed at first.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191537

Interested in African clawed frogs? Check out these other Xenopus sciku: ‘Clawed frogs indicate‘, ‘Have frog, will travel‘, ‘Fungal culprit‘ and ‘Xenopus enrichment‘.

August 23, 2017May 20, 2021

Fungal culprit

Fungal culprit of

amphibian genocide –

Innocent scapegoat?

Amphibian populations are in the midst of a pandemic, the spread of chytrid fungus devastating species around the world. Conservationists have pointed a finger of blame at African clawed frogs: they are hosts of the fungus, have a degree of immunity and have spread around the world due to their use in research laboratories and hospitals.

The circumstantial evidence seems damming but research by Tinsley et al (2015) into long-standing UK populations suggests otherwise. Native amphibian species present alongside populations of African clawed frogs were not infected with chytrid fungus, despite the African clawed frogs themselves carrying it. What’s more, the African clawed frog populations have been present for decades yet surveys revealed continued high native species abundance. If fungal transmission from African clawed frogs were an issue then such levels of native amphibians would be unlikely.

It seems then that African clawed frogs may be scapegoats after all.

Interested in African clawed frogs? Check out these other Xenopus sciku: ‘Clawed frogs indicate‘, ‘Have frog, will travel‘, ‘Xenopus enrichment‘ and ‘Reservoir or predator‘.

April 18, 2017June 14, 2017

Perfect storm

Spreading fungal scourge

salamanders succumbing

perfect storm draws near.

Many of the world’s amphibians are under threat from a chytrid fungus (Bd), particularly in the tropics where it is driving many amphibian species towards extinction. More recently a sister species (Bs) has been observed in Western-European salamanders. Observations of a salamander population across two years following initial detection of Bs suggest a rapid population collapse with little recovery. Bs also has an increased transmission strategy over Bd and may behave as a “perfect storm” as it spreads through European populations of salamanders. Stegen et al, 2017.