If we talk about mushrooms, the first thing that comes to mind is the autumn forest, quiet hunting. You can also remember about yeast, blue cheese and penicillin. But few people think about what role mushrooms play in the ecosystem, why nature needs them. Let's talk about it.
Harm or benefit?
They say that if you put on one scale the benefit that a person receives from these organisms, and on the other - their harm, the scales will balance. Although, arguing about what role fungi play in the ecosystem, this is not the way to put the question. Nature is important and needs everything.
Mycology, the study of mushrooms, is considered one of the branches of botany. But mushrooms have long been isolated in a separate kingdom. That is, there is a kingdom of plants and, separately, a kingdom of fungi.
One of the main features is that the structural carbohydrate in the cell wall of these organisms is chitin. It is also an integral part of the external skeleton of insects, arthropods. Chitin has interesting properties, one of which is the ability to remove harmful substances from the human body and reduce cholesterol. At the sametime because of it mushrooms are considered heavy food. It is better not to give them to children under 6-7 years old, it is also better for nursing mothers not to eat them. The child's enzyme system may not be able to handle this product.
Why does nature need mushrooms?
One of their main functions is decomposition, processing of organic residues. As a result of the biodegradation of dead plant and animal organisms, carbon and minerals are returned to the natural cycle.
Mushrooms are involved in the processes of soil formation, affect their structure, composition and even temperature. Indeed, during decay, the temperature of the decaying residues rises. This is well known to gardeners who grow vegetables in warm beds.
Mushrooms in the course of their life activity create biomass from mycelium and fruiting bodies (what we know from childhood as fly agaric, russula, boletus, etc.). Not only people feed on them, but also insects and various animals.
Mushroomroot
The importance of fungi in the creation of mycorrhiza is invaluable. It turns out that mushrooms not only destroy trees, but can be beneficial to them. In nature, the phenomenon of symbiosis is widespread - coexistence beneficial for both organisms.
Mycorrhiza forms an association of mycelial threads and tree roots. The fungus receives nutrients from the higher plant in an accessible form and, in turn, helps it extract water and phosphorus from the soil. The tree actually has additional roots.
Mycorrhiza can be external, surrounding the roots, and can also penetrate inside. There is an active exchange of substances between the cells of two organisms. What role do fungi play in the ecosystem in this case? Forest life is simply impossible without them, especially in dry areas.
On the brink of survival
In places where the climate is harsh and vegetation is very sparse, fungi form symbiotic communities not with trees, but with algae, known as lichens. They can be found in the tundra and desert, on rocks, buildings, tree bark - where, it would seem, there are no conditions for life. But mushrooms extract water even from the air, from dew, and algae converts carbon dioxide in the light into organic food for both.
The settlement of new spaces, the development of organic matter in these places - this is another meaning of mushrooms in nature.
Predatory mushrooms
According to the lifestyle and way of eating, mushrooms are divided into:
- soil saprophytes (champignon, talker, morel);
- xylophiles parasitizing living or decomposing dead trees (real honey agaric, tinder fungus);
- mycorrhizal, creating a symbiosis with the roots of plants (white, boletus, flywheel).
Coprophilous mushrooms live on manure heaps, carbophiles live on conflagrations.
And some mushrooms are able to "hunt". Their prey can be amoeba, insects, nematodes. The threads of the fungus stick to the victim, wrap in mucus, some are even able to suffocate it, then germinate inside and feed on it. This is another example of whatmushrooms play a role in the ecosystem.
Huge and many-sided
The world of mushrooms visible to humans is a tiny part of the existing diversity of their species. Mushrooms, photos and names of which are familiar from childhood, are fly agaric, white, honey agaric, russula, pale grebe and many others. They are in children's coloring books and cookbooks, emergency medicine guides and pharmacology textbooks. Mushrooms can be an exquisite food and a deadly poison for humans, they can heal and cause diseases, save and destroy crops, make housing unsuitable.
The era of antibiotics in medicine began with mushrooms. Now more and more evidence is being used to boost immunity, fight cancer, tinder fungus, cordyceps, shiitake, etc.
This is how they are, our visible and invisible, necessary and dangerous neighbors.
