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Do Mushrooms create their own weather systems?


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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

From an article in the Daily Mail yesterday:

 

Mushrooms create their own WEATHER: Fungi alter nearby air humidity to create 'winds' that spread their spores far and wide
  • Researchers found that oyster and onionsake mushrooms release water vapour that cools the air around them, creating convection currents
  • This in turn generates miniature winds that lift their spores into the air
  • The scientists believe the same process may be used by all mushroom fungi, including those that cause diseases in plants, animals and humans
Mushrooms have an extraordinary ability to control the weather, scientists have learned. By altering the moisture of the air around them, they are able to whip up winds that blow away their spores and help them disperse. Plants use a variety of methods to spread seeds, including gravity, forceful ejection, wind, water and animals.
 
Mushrooms have long been thought of as passive seed spreaders, releasing their spores and then relying on air currents to carry them. But new research has shown that mushrooms are able to disperse their spores over a wide area even when there is not a breath of wind - by creating their own 'weather'.
 
U.S. scientists used high-speed filming techniques and mathematical modelling to show how oyster and onionsake mushrooms release water vapour to cool the air surrounding them, creating convection currents.  The scientists believe the same process may be used by all mushroom fungi, including those that cause diseases in plants, animals and humans.  This in turn generates miniature winds that lift their spores into the air.
 
Posted Image
 
The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics in Pittsburgh, suggest that mushrooms are far more than mechanical spore manufacturers.
'Our research shows that these "machines" are much more complex than that: they control their local environments, and create winds where there were none in nature,' said lead scientist Professor Emilie Dressaire, from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  'That's pretty amazing, but fungi are ingenious engineers.'
 
A mushroom - or toadstool - is technically the fleshy, spore-bearing, fruiting body of a fungus. Millions of spores, microscopic single-celled 'seeds', may be produced by a single mushroom, and at least a few of these are likely to land somewhere suitable for fungal growth

 

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Posted
  • Location: South Shields Tyne & Wear half mile from the coast.
  • Location: South Shields Tyne & Wear half mile from the coast.
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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Would only work in perfectly still conditions. If you think about it it's like you trying to alter the climate around you by blowing into a breeze. Nothing will happen as you can't release enough energy.

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