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Mycelium is an important food source for many soil invertebrates. They are vital to agriculture and are important to almost all species of plants, many species co-evolving with the fungi. Mycelium is a primary factor in some plants' health, nutrient intake and growth, with mycelium being a major factor to plant fitness.
A banana slug feeding on Amanita. Many terrestrial gastropod mollusks are known to feed on fungi. It is the case in several species of slugs from distinct families.Among them are the Philomycidae (e. g. Philomycus carolinianus and Phylomicus flexuolaris) and Ariolimacidae (Ariolimax californianus), which respectively feed on slime molds (myxomycetes) and mushrooms (basidiomycetes). [5]
In contrast to plants and animals, the early fossil record of the fungi is meager. Factors that likely contribute to the under-representation of fungal species among fossils include the nature of fungal fruiting bodies , which are soft, fleshy, and easily degradable tissues and the microscopic dimensions of most fungal structures, which ...
Though mushroom fruiting bodies are short-lived, the underlying mycelium can itself be long-lived and massive. A colony of Armillaria solidipes (formerly known as Armillaria ostoyae) in Malheur National Forest in the United States is estimated to be 2,400 years old, possibly older, and spans an estimated 2,200 acres (8.9 km 2). [23]
The English word fungus is directly adopted from the Latin fungus (mushroom), used in the writings of Horace and Pliny. [10] This in turn is derived from the Greek word sphongos (σφόγγος 'sponge'), which refers to the macroscopic structures and morphology of mushrooms and molds; [11] the root is also used in other languages, such as the German Schwamm ('sponge') and Schimmel ('mold').
The network of hyphae (the mycelium) is fundamental to fungal nutrition. Look up saprotroph in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Saprotrophic nutrition / s æ p r ə ˈ t r ɒ f ɪ k , - p r oʊ -/ [ 1 ] or lysotrophic nutrition [ 2 ] [ 3 ] is a process of chemoheterotrophic extracellular digestion involved in the processing of decayed (dead or ...
However, there are examples of animal and human parasites where the species are dimorphic but it is the yeast-like state that is infectious. [18] The genus Filobasidiella forms basidia on hyphae but the main infectious stage is more commonly known by the anamorphic yeast name Cryptococcus , e.g. Cryptococcus neoformans [ 19 ] and Cryptococcus ...
They are supported by the vegetative mycelium containing uni– (or mono–) nucleate hyphae, which are sterile. The mycelium containing both sterile and fertile hyphae may grow into fruiting body, the ascocarp, which may contain millions of fertile hyphae. An ascocarp is the fruiting body of the sexual phase in Ascomycota.