Tuber macrosporum by Nicolò Oppicelli
Fomitopsis pinicola by Heinonlein
Summary
Take a walk in the woods, and a mushroom you’re guaranteed to find (any time of year) is a polypore. They’re tough, occasionally massive, and one of the most important features of many terrestrial ecosystems.
This is an excerpt from episode 8 of our Patreon-exclusive series: “Meet Your Fungal Associates”.
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Trametes versicolor by Jerzy Opioła
Show notes
Thanks as always to Kmathz for the kick-butt theme song for this series. Other music in this episode was produced by VALSI and SHIITAKE
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Sources for this episode are:
Astrobiology Magazine (Jul 2012), Fungi Marked the End of the Coal Age, Astrobiology Magazine
Floudas D, Binder M, Riley R, et al (June 2012), The Paleozoic Origin of Enzymatic Lignin Decomposition Reconstructed from 31 Fungal Genomes, Science, Vol. 336, Issue 6089, pp. 1715-1719, DOI: 10.1126/science.1221748
Hibbett D. Blanchette R, Kenrick P, Mills B (Jul 2016) Climate, decay, and the death of the coal forests, Current Biology, 26 (13), R563-R567, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.014
Johnson, S K (Jan 2016), Why Was Most of the Earth’s Coal Made All at Once?, Ars Technica
Nelsen M P, DiMichele W A, Peters S E, Boyce C K (Mar 2016), Coal is not a product of delayed fungal evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (9) 2442-2447; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1517943113
Robinson J M (Jul 1990) Lignin, land plants, and fungi: biological evolution affecting Phanerozoic oxygen balance, Geology, 18 (7), pp. 607-610, https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(1990)018<0607:LLPAFB>2.3.CO;2
Weng J‐K, Chapple C (2010), The origin and evolution of lignin biosynthesis. New Phytologist, 187: 273-285. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03327.x
This episode of Future Ecologies was recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.