Brutkey

Stan Carey
@stancarey@mastodon.ie

"The difference between animals and fungi is simple: animals put food in their bodies, whereas fungi put their bodies in the food."

—Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life

#fungi #mushtodon #books #FungiFriday #nature #biology #mycology #MerlinSheldrake #nature

Cover of Merlin Sheldrake's book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. It's black, with white and yellow text, and an illustration by Job Wouter of various fungal bodies and mycelium in bold yellow, red, blue, and white. Quotes by Helen MacDonald: "Urgent, astounding and necessary"; and Robert Macfarlane: "Dazzling, vibrant, vision changing".
Stan Carey
@stancarey@mastodon.ie

To promote the book (and have some fun at the same time), Sheldrake fed a copy to some oyster mushrooms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chOsO7XhLB8 and then ate the mushrooms that grew from his book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJfDaIVl-tE

(Most of the sounds in the timelapse video were made by mushrooms; see the alt text or click through for details.)

#fungi #mushtodon #books #FungiFriday #nature #biology #mycology #MerlinSheldrake #food #mushrooms #timelapse

Stan Carey
@stancarey@mastodon.ie

Lichen morphology (no, the other kind) in Sheldrake's "Entangled Life"

#lichen #lichenisation #evolution #LichenSubscribe #biology #MerlinSheldrake #nature #fungi #mycology #affixes #morphology

No-one knows when lichens first evolved. The earliest fossils date from just over 400 million years ago, but it’s possible that lichen-like organisms occurred before this. Lichens have evolved independently between nine and twelve times since. Today, one in five of all known fungal species form lichens, or ‘lichenise’. Some fungi (such as Penicillium moulds) used to lichenise but don’t any more; they have de-lichenised. Some fungi have switched to different types of photosynthetic partner — or re-lichenised — over the course of their evolutionary histories. For some fungi, lichenisation remains a lifestyle choice; they can live as lichens or not. depending on their circumstances.