Fungi's "roots", called hyphae, can bore right through stone and played a significant role in creating soil.
Yup, thats right, mushrooms are older than dirt. They MADE dirt.
IM ABOUT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THESE RAD STABBY BOYS 🧵
Important context: hyphae are the branching filaments that make up fungi. The mycelium (which is like the "root system") is made of these tiny tendrils, and the mushroom is too, all stacked up! They are long tubular structures, like a hose, but TEENY (4 to 6 microns thick).
1/2 billion years ago, the terrestrial world was mostly just rocks, but then fungi (and other micro-organisms) starting boring into the stone and breaking it up into minerals and eventually soil so that plants could move onto land. BUT THAT'S JUST THE BEGINNING!
Plants are now on land and mushrooms are their best friends. 90% of plants have symbiotic relationships with fungi, they've got matching tattoos and blood oaths, it's a whole thing. Fungi help the plants talk to each other and share nutrients, the ultimate wing man.
BUT WHY STOP THERE? In '97, some scientists noticed that some forests suffering from acid rain in Europe were still thriving, even though the soil was too acidic and the nutrients shouldn't have been accessible to them.
When they looked at the soil under a microscope, they saw that it had grains of sand full of tiny, tubular holes, even in quartz (which is a hard mineral). Turns out the fungi were DRILLING THROUGH STONE to get the "locked up" nutrients for their tree buddies.
Citation for nerds:
van Breemen, N., Finlay, R., Lundström, U. et al. Mycorrhizal weathering: A true case of mineral plant nutrition?. Biogeochemistry 49, 53–67 (2000). doi.org/10.1023/A:1006…
They mine pretty quick, 0.3-30 micrometers per year. Meaning 150 meters of pores are formed each year per liter of “E horizon” soil – a type of forest dirt leached of many minerals. 150 m PER LITER (1483 ft per gallon) !!! That's the tallest godzilla in a bottle of mountain dew!
Mushrooms can also use their hyphae to hunt! Oyster mushrooms are usually happy to eat dead wood, but when they're low on nutrients, they go on the offensive.
They produce POISON on the tip of their hyphae and use it to spear nematodes, paralyse them, then digest them 😳
Mushrooms are such an important part of ecology, but they are also foundational to the creation of the world as we know it. They are older than dirt. They also taught trees how to grow, but that's another story for another thread 😉 Happy forays!
Also warning, since I'm on the struggle bus rn 🚎 y'all might get more #mycology info-dumping than usual😅 lmk if there's something you'd like me to go through next!
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A quick note about employment discrimination. They never SAY “you can’t work here because you’re disabled”, they just make the environment increasingly hostile and refuse to accommodate your needs as a disabled person. And you have to self advocate CONSTANTLY while being gaslit —
It’s this balancing act between trying to convince them “I promise I’m not too disabled to work here and I can do the same work as anyone else!” and “I swear I’m actually disabled please give me this minor accommodation here’s my personal medical info and life story” —
Don’t disclose, and you get overlooked for opportunities because you’re demanding or flawed for “no reason”. Disclose, and you get overlooked because they question your capability (ie “autistic ppl can’t lead teams bc of poor social skills”) —
🌳🌳LIQUID TREES ARE COOL, y'all are just haters: a thread.🌳🌳
This tweet went viral and twitter got mad as heck about it. "But we love trees!" they cried. But they are actually really cool and here's why: (1/14)
First: it was never meant to replace trees. The viral tweet blatantly misrepresented this, as did a lot of the reporting. It's meant to be used in places where trees can't survive. Trees often struggle in urban areas and can cause lots of problems for the community. (2/14)
Most cities only plant male trees, because they don't want to deal with cleaning up fruit, which means way more pollen. (3/14) theguardian.com/environment/20…
The TERFs found my mushroom thread and are mad about Schizophyllum commune having 23000 sexes. I want to clarify what’s going on there as best I can. Their genome has 2 loci that determine sex, called “A” and “B”— BUT THATS ONLY THE BEGINNING 🧵
So those loci (like genetic buckets) can fit 2 kinds of alleles, called Alpha and Beta (I know, very original naming). So the mating type could be A1B1 meaning it has the alpha allele at both loci. With me so far? Now these alleles has specificities, like subgroups or variants. —
For those two loci, A has more than 339 specificities and B has 64. These loci are independent from each other, so any combo is possible. Now it’s just a matter of math (anyone remember how to calculate permutations? 😳) to determine that means over 23k mating types.
I was so excited to go to Hot Topic and get my vintage Xmen cartoon, Sailor Moon and mushroom-print clothing. But they didn't have any in stock, and none of the items I want from the website ship to Canada (even though other items have international shipping) 🪦
God truly gives His toughest battles to His strongest warriors.
Pour one out for my Teenage Dreams 🍺
They did have a lot of Nightmare Before Christmas, Invader Zim and other scene kid stables that I would have adored as a youth, but those interests didn't stay with me until adulthood (which is probably for the best).