60 Fun Facts About Fungi

Which substance in their cell walls sets fungi apart from plants, bacteria and most protists?

The same tough polymer forms the exoskeletons of insects and crabs; fungi are the only organisms that combine it with glucans in a cell wall.

Genetically, fungi are more closely related to which group than to plants?

Both sit in the opisthokonts, a lineage marked by a single trailing flagellum, and both are heterotrophs that must eat rather than photosynthesise.

What is the scientific study of fungi called?

The word comes from the Greek mykes, mushroom; the discipline was once treated as a branch of botany.

Roughly how many fungal species have been formally described, out of an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million?

More than 90 percent of fungi are thought to be still unknown; 2,905 new species were named in 2020 alone, a record.

The Latin word fungus, used by Horace and Pliny, ultimately derives from a Greek word meaning what?

The same root gives German its words for both sponge and mould.

What are the thread-like filaments that make up the body of most fungi called?

They are just 2 to 10 micrometres across, grow only at their tips, and can push through plant tissue with pressures over 1,200 psi.

What is the interconnected network of fungal filaments called?

Grown on damp walls or spoiled food it is what we call mould; grown on agar in a petri dish it is called a colony.

How do fungi obtain their food?

They are the planet's principal decomposers, and along with bacteria they drive most nutrient cycles.

How many phyla did the 2007 consensus classification of the fungal kingdom recognise?

Two of them form the subkingdom Dikarya, which holds nearly everything familiar: mushrooms, moulds and brewing yeasts.

The largest fungal phylum, the Ascomycota, is commonly known by what name?

Their spores form inside a sac called an ascus; the group includes morels, truffles, yeasts and Penicillium.

Which group of fungi are the only ones with actively swimming spores, driven by a single flagellum?

That motility once led taxonomists to file them with the protists; their zoospores let them hunt down amphibian hosts in water.

Water moulds (oomycetes) and slime moulds were once classed as fungi. Why are oomycetes now excluded?

Slime moulds are out for a different reason: they engulf food by phagocytosis rather than absorbing it.

What organism was Ötzi the Iceman carrying, 5,300 years ago, that may have served as tinder or medicine?

One was Fomes fomentarius, the tinder fungus, and the other Piptoporus betulinus, the birch polypore.

Whose 1729 Nova plantarum genera is considered the founding text of the study of fungi?

Fungal spores had first been seen by Giambattista della Porta back in 1588.

How do fungi such as Armillaria compensate for having no xylem or phloem to move water?

Those cords let the honey fungus spread underground for kilometres and attack tree after tree.

What in Oregon's Malheur National Forest is often called the largest living organism on Earth?

The Armillaria ostoyae colony is estimated to be around 8,000 years old.

Yeasts reproduce mainly by which method?

A small daughter cell swells off the parent and pinches free; a few species use fission instead.

Roughly what share of all described fungal species are yeasts?

At least 1,500 yeast species are known, and they do not form one natural group: they turn up in two separate phyla.

Which microbiologist proved in the 1850s that alcoholic fermentation is carried out by living yeast?

He also found that bubbling oxygen through the broth boosted yeast growth but shut down fermentation, still called the Pasteur effect.

Which ancient civilisation's ruins hold 4,000-year-old evidence of yeast-raised bread and brewing?

Vessels from sites in Israel up to 5,000 years old still held living yeast colonies from ancient beer and mead.

Marmite and Vegemite are made from what?

Salt is added to a yeast suspension, the cells digest themselves, and the result is a spread rich in B vitamins.

Which mould is the essential ingredient for brewing soy sauce and sake and making miso?

Rhizopus moulds do a similar job for tempeh; these are domesticated strains selected not to produce toxins.

Which fungus is inoculated into curds to create the blue veins in Stilton and Roquefort?

Cheese moulds are non-toxic, though other fungi growing during ripening can leave mycotoxins behind.

Who noticed in September 1928 that a mould contaminating a Staphylococcus culture had killed it?

He coined the word penicillin the following March, to avoid repeating the phrase 'mould broth filtrate'.

Which two scientists shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Fleming for turning penicillin into a usable drug?

Their Oxford team isolated the purified compound in 1940; the first US patient, Anne Miller, used half the country's entire supply in 1942.

Which fungal product is used to stop transplant patients rejecting new organs?

It comes from the fungus Tolypocladium inflatum, a relative of the zombie-ant fungus.

Lovastatin comes from Aspergillus terreus and which edible mushroom?

Mevastatin, the first, came from a Penicillium species; the shiitake instead yields the anti-cancer drug lentinan.

Ergot fungus growing on rye caused which historical epidemic disease?

Claviceps purpurea's alkaloids cause convulsions and gangrene, and are chemical cousins of LSD.

Aflatoxins, among the most carcinogenic natural substances, are produced by which moulds?

They are insidious liver toxins, and peanut and maize stores in warm climates are the classic source.

Which mushroom is responsible for about 90 percent of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide?

Half a cap can kill an adult; its amatoxins destroy the liver, and it has hitch-hiked around the world on the roots of imported oaks.

Which discovery in genetics was made using the bread mould Neurospora crassa?

Ascomycetes are handy for genetics because the products of each meiosis stay lined up inside the ascus.

What proportion of plant species depend on mycorrhizal partnerships with fungi?

The relationship is at least 400 million years old; the fungus trades soil phosphate and nitrate for the plant's sugars.

Who coined the term 'mycorrhiza' in 1885?

Earlier, Franciszek Kamieński had shown in 1881 that a pale forest plant lived entirely off fungi linked to neighbouring trees.

Lichens are partnerships between a fungus and what?

The photobiont makes sugars; the fungus supplies water and minerals, and the result behaves almost like a single new organism.

Roughly what fraction of known fungal species live as lichens?

That is more than 19,400 species, mostly ascomycetes; lichens colonise bare rock, barnacles, tree bark and Antarctic valleys.

In 2005 the ESA exposed two lichen species to open space on a Soyuz flight. What happened?

They were also unchanged in their ability to photosynthesise, and lichens later survived 34 days of simulated Martian conditions.

How fast do most crust-forming lichens grow?

That slowness lets scientists date rockfalls and glacier retreats by measuring lichen patches.

Which fungal disease has been linked to dramatic declines and extinctions of amphibians worldwide?

The chytrid Bd attacks skin keratin until frogs can no longer breathe or regulate water; it was first noticed in dying Queensland frogs in 1993.

Which naturalist discovered the zombie-ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis in 1859?

Infected carpenter ants abandon the canopy, clamp onto a leaf near the forest floor and die where the fungus can best fruit.

Dutch elm disease is caused by fungi of which genus?

Chestnut blight, rice blast and Texas root rot are fellow fungal plagues of plants; over 8,000 fungal species harm plants.

Rusts and smuts, major pathogens of cereal crops, belong to which fungal group?

They share the phylum with most common mushrooms and with Ustilago maydis, the maize smut that Mexicans eat as huitlacoche.

Athlete's foot and ringworm are infections caused by what?

Dermatophytes attack skin, nails and hair; the 'worm' in ringworm is a medieval misunderstanding of the ring-shaped rash.

Some fungi in the Chernobyl zone appear to use the pigment melanin to harvest energy from what?

This 'radiotrophic' growth is documented in only a few species and the effect on growth is small, but the mechanism is being studied.

How do stinkhorns disperse?

Bird's nest fungi use raindrops, puffballs use passing feet, and Pilobolus fires its spores several metres.

A mushroom's ballistospore is launched with an initial acceleration of more than what?

The whole flight is only 0.01 to 0.02 cm, just enough to clear the gill and fall into the air below.

How do truffles, which grow underground, spread to new ground?

That strong scent is also why pigs and trained dogs can find them for the kitchen.

Why did Italy ban the use of pigs for truffle hunting in 1985?

Dogs are now preferred because they do not want to eat the truffle, so they can be trained to point without digging.

The prized white truffle Tuber magnatum is most famously found around which northern Italian town?

It grows in the Langhe and Montferrat hills of Piedmont; the black Périgord truffle is its French rival.

Prototaxites, possibly a giant fungus, held what distinction around 400 million years ago?

Fungi were on land well before plants: a billion-year-old fossil fungus was reported from the Canadian Arctic in 2019.

What happened to fungi immediately after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs?

With most plant and animal life dead, decomposers feasted; a similar 'fungal spike' followed the Permian extinction.

What word has been proposed, on the model of flora and fauna, for all the fungi of a region?

In 2021 the IUCN asked that the phrase fauna and flora be replaced by fauna, flora and funga.

Fungal enzymes called cellulases are used in which fashion process?

Fungi also mass-produce citric acid, lipases for biological detergents and amylases for brewing.

Which wood-boring insects farm fungus gardens inside the trees they infest?

Wood wasps go further, injecting fungal spores along with their eggs so the fungus pre-digests the pine for the larvae.

White-rot fungi are used in bioremediation because they can break down what?

They turn the pollutants into carbon dioxide, water and basic elements, and some fungi can lock up uranium as minerals.

The oldest known mushroom-forming fungus, Archaeomarasmius, was preserved in amber from which period?

Mushrooms fossilise badly because they are soft and rot fast, so the amber specimens are precious.

The meat substitute Quorn is made from which fungus?

Quorn's mycoprotein is grown in fermenters; a related fungus, Rhizopus, is used to make tempeh.

Portobello and button mushrooms are the same species at different sizes. Which species?

It is the most widely cultivated mushroom in the West and turns up in everything from salads to soups.

Which mould genus can eject its spores several metres through the air?

The 'hat-thrower' fungus grows on dung and aims its spore capsules toward the light.

Roughly how many fungal species are known to glow via bioluminescence?

Glowing mushrooms produce 'foxfire', a faint light in rotting wood that has been noted since antiquity.

Polysaccharide-K, sold as Krestin and used alongside cancer therapy, comes from which fungus?

Better known as turkey tail, it is approved as a cancer-therapy adjuvant in Europe and Japan.