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eubOn fungal lifestyles:
All of these criteria pre-dispose us (Westerners) to consider fungi parasites: fungi are permanently immobile, they are rarely prized in their own right (especially in their mycelial form), and they always feed by dissolving some of the stuff surrounding them and absorbing it. [...] In other words, whenever a fungus feeds on a living plant or animal, it is bound to be considered a parasite, simply because it can't move and can't bite big chunks out of its host, the way "honest" herbivores and carnivores do. I thus consider the term to be biologically meaningless in connection with fungi, and frankly, with any organism whatsoever.
One of the very few fungi to certifiably go extinct is Echinodontium ballouii. Echinodontium species are even more vulnerable to forest “management” because they have to grow inside the tree for 70-80 years before they can fruit. Echinodontium ballouii was endemic to Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), an endangered tree that occurs only in three isolated stands along the East Coast. An aggressive program of core sampling and cutting down “infected” trees quickly eliminated the fungus (like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) from the planet.
Orchids, for example, produce a tiny, tiny seed which does not have enough stored food to nourish the embryo. In the wild, an orchid seed will not germinate at all unless it is already in contact with a fungus that it can immediately form a mycorrhiza with and draw upon for nutrition. The flower industry has perfected growth media that provide the nutrients normally supplied by the mycorrhizal fungus, and thus are able to germinate orchid seeds on this medium in axenic culture. But in nature, an orchid essentially starts out life as a parasitic organism. There are even two species of orchid (both lacking chlorophyll) known from Australia that grow, flower and fruit entirely underground, deriving their entire life's nutrition from parasitizing a mycorrhizal fungus. One orchid is apparently pollinated by burrowing beetles, and its strongly-scented fruits are dispersed by burrowing animals, much like truffles.
You would think that lichens would be the poster children for happy, harmonious symbiosis. But nooooo. The very discoverer of the symbiotic nature of lichens, Simon Schwendener, said "As the result of my researches, the lichens are not simple plants, not individuals in the ordinary sense of the word; they are, rather, colonies, which consist of hundreds of thousands of individuals, of which, however, one alone plays the master, while the rest, forever imprisoned, prepare the nutriment for themselves and their master. This master is a fungus of the class Ascomycetes, a parasite which is accustomed to live upon others' work. Its slaves are green algae, which it has sought out, or indeed caught hold of, and compelled into its service. It surrounds them, as a spider its prey, with a fibrous net of narrow meshes, which is gradually converted into an impenetrable covering; but while the spider sucks its prey and leaves it dead, the fungus incites the algae found in its net to more rapid activity, even to more vigorous increase...." (translated by Vernon Ahmadjian in The Lichen Symbiosis (p.4), and garnished with a cartoon showing a smirking fungus holding keys and a billy club standing in front of a bunch of algae (floating unhappy faces) imprisoned in a vaguely biological-looking jail)
All of these criteria pre-dispose us (Westerners) to consider fungi parasites: fungi are permanently immobile, they are rarely prized in their own right (especially in their mycelial form), and they always feed by dissolving some of the stuff surrounding them and absorbing it. [...] In other words, whenever a fungus feeds on a living plant or animal, it is bound to be considered a parasite, simply because it can't move and can't bite big chunks out of its host, the way "honest" herbivores and carnivores do. I thus consider the term to be biologically meaningless in connection with fungi, and frankly, with any organism whatsoever.
One of the very few fungi to certifiably go extinct is Echinodontium ballouii. Echinodontium species are even more vulnerable to forest “management” because they have to grow inside the tree for 70-80 years before they can fruit. Echinodontium ballouii was endemic to Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), an endangered tree that occurs only in three isolated stands along the East Coast. An aggressive program of core sampling and cutting down “infected” trees quickly eliminated the fungus (like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) from the planet.
Orchids, for example, produce a tiny, tiny seed which does not have enough stored food to nourish the embryo. In the wild, an orchid seed will not germinate at all unless it is already in contact with a fungus that it can immediately form a mycorrhiza with and draw upon for nutrition. The flower industry has perfected growth media that provide the nutrients normally supplied by the mycorrhizal fungus, and thus are able to germinate orchid seeds on this medium in axenic culture. But in nature, an orchid essentially starts out life as a parasitic organism. There are even two species of orchid (both lacking chlorophyll) known from Australia that grow, flower and fruit entirely underground, deriving their entire life's nutrition from parasitizing a mycorrhizal fungus. One orchid is apparently pollinated by burrowing beetles, and its strongly-scented fruits are dispersed by burrowing animals, much like truffles.
You would think that lichens would be the poster children for happy, harmonious symbiosis. But nooooo. The very discoverer of the symbiotic nature of lichens, Simon Schwendener, said "As the result of my researches, the lichens are not simple plants, not individuals in the ordinary sense of the word; they are, rather, colonies, which consist of hundreds of thousands of individuals, of which, however, one alone plays the master, while the rest, forever imprisoned, prepare the nutriment for themselves and their master. This master is a fungus of the class Ascomycetes, a parasite which is accustomed to live upon others' work. Its slaves are green algae, which it has sought out, or indeed caught hold of, and compelled into its service. It surrounds them, as a spider its prey, with a fibrous net of narrow meshes, which is gradually converted into an impenetrable covering; but while the spider sucks its prey and leaves it dead, the fungus incites the algae found in its net to more rapid activity, even to more vigorous increase...." (translated by Vernon Ahmadjian in The Lichen Symbiosis (p.4), and garnished with a cartoon showing a smirking fungus holding keys and a billy club standing in front of a bunch of algae (floating unhappy faces) imprisoned in a vaguely biological-looking jail)
