It was with Neil Mahler I first learned that fungi were neither plant nor animal, but probably more animal than plant. I gather as recently as the 1960s, fungi were considered plants, so understandably I was conditioned by my era of education. The plant annimal definition was based on two criteria, mobility and the method of gaining nourishment. “The animals moved and plants didn’t, and that’s how fungi got stuck with the plants,” However, unlike plants, fungi do not contain the green pigment chlorophyll and therefore are incapable of photosynthesis, so cannot generate their own food — carbohydrates — by using energy from light. Fungi need to absorb nutrition from organic substances: compounds that contain carbon, like carbohydrates, fats, or proteins. Like animals.
The new classification included a vast array of species. Among them, mushrooms, yeast, molds, slime molds, water molds, puffballs and mildews.
Plants only made it out of water 500,000 million years ago because of their collaboration with fungi which served as their root system until they developed one of their own.
Earth 4.5 billion years. Fossils 2.4 billion of branching filaments
Reproduction – spores – single cells – millions of them, largest source of living particals in the air.
Slime Molds – not fungi – problem solving behaviour.
mycelium is how fungi feed. Fungi digest the world around them, absorbe it into their bodies. Their Hyphae, single cell wide, are long and branched, hyphae grow by getting longer.
hyphae grow into mushrooms.
Sensory behaviour – eg phycomyces – as sensitive as human eye to light
Are network based life forms like fungi or slime mold capable of a form of cognition? (Darwin: intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing things they need to survive’.
LICHEN
Not a single organism but composed of two different entities – algae and fungi. The Algai partner harvested light and carbon di-oxide into sugars. Fungal partners were ‘parasites with the wisdom of statesmen’. ‘In the wake of the dual hypothesis, evolution could no longer be thought of solely in terms of competition and conflict. Lichens had become a type of case of inter-kingdom collaboration.’
Lichens cover as much as 8% of the earths surface, cladding rocks, fences, roofs and the surface of desert. Weathering on stones – physically break up surfaces by the force of growth and arsenal of powerful acides and mineral binding compounds. Capacity to survive in space. Lichens start where seaweed stops
Lichens – Lynn Margulis theory of endosymbiotic – levered litchens as a prime example
Margulis focused on symbiosis, which is the scientific term for two different species of organisms living closely together in a way that benefits at least one of the species. Examples of symbiosis are a species of small fish that cleans parasites from much larger fish, or a fungus that grows on a person’s skin. Margulis theorized that eukaryotic cells (cells with nuclei) evolved from a symbiosis of bacteria without nuclei that had previously lived independently. In this theory, both chloroplasts and other structures found in cells, called mitochondria, evolved from once free-living bacterial species. This serial endosymbiotic theory, or SET, gave a new view of evolution and helped explain the origin of cells with nuclei. Margulis’s idea was revolutionary: That cells with nuclei, including all the cells in the human body, descended from bacteria that formed symbiotic relationships more than 2 billion years ago. 1970’s
Lynn Margulis
The famous Carpenter ants, and fungus Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis – Zombi ant.
Once infected by the fungus, the ants are stripped of their instinctive fear of heights, leave the relative safety of their nests and climb up to the nearest plant (summit disease’) The fungus forces the ant to clamp its jaws around the plant in a death grip. Mycelium grows from the ants feet and stitches them to th eplants surface. The fungus digests the ants body and sprouts a stalk out from its head, from which spores shower down on ants passing below.
Ophiocordyceps closely related to the ergot fungi from which Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann originally isolated the compounds used to make up LSD.
Psilocybin mushrooms
On the other hand have shown curing properties.
Once inside the body, psilocybin is converted to the chemcial psilocin, which stimulates brain receptors, inteGut dwelling microbe influence anmal minds by living inside of their bodies, fine tuning their chemical secreations in real time
Kaliwood 