If you're not a fan of mushrooms, you're missing out on an incredible experience. When venturing into the realm of wild mushrooms, you'll find satisfaction for all your senses and ignite your scientific curiosity. Dive into the diverse ways fungi disperse their spores, from wind transport to water droplets and even insect-assisted methods.
As a child, you might have created a spore print by placing the cap of a mature mushroom (gill side down) on paper or plastic. This simple experiment unveils the intricate patterns of spores, mirroring the spaces between the gills on the mushroom cap's underside.
Ever wondered how these spores, also known as "ballistospores," get launched? In regular mushrooms, spores are produced through meiosis, budding off a specialised surface cell called a basidium. These spores are held in place by a slender peduncle (sterigma) that breaks to release them into the air. Contrary to the misconception of osmotic turgor or gas pressure, the force involved is revealed through the pioneering work of Reginald Buller in the early 1900s. Buller observed a water droplet forming at the spore's base just before discharge, known as "Buller's drop." Ultra high-speed cameras used by Nik Money and colleagues showed that this drop grows until it coalesces with the water on the spore's surface, shifting the spore's centre of mass and detaching it, creating what they termed a "surface tension catapult."
Why include mushrooms in a discussion on "small things"? Mushrooms are not only declared honorary microbes but also the fruiting bodies of organisms consisting of microscopic filaments, akin to moulds. Consider yeasts, like Sporobolomyces, a basidiomycete yeast capable of spore discharge analogous to mushrooms. While the video from the Money lab captures this process at 210,000 frames per second, the spores are not meiotic but conidia, the vegetative spores typical of moulds.
The captivating world of mycology extends beyond the dispersion of spores in mushrooms. Engaging in various facets of mycology will open your eyes to a multitude of phenomena waiting to be discovered.