This Humongous Fungus Has Been Around Since the Birth of Socrates
Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2018, 03:58 AM - Edit history (1)
By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | December 19, 2018 06:44am ET
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This Humongous Fungus Has Been Around Since the Birth of Socrates
Much of the fungus (Armillaria gallica) is underground, but in the fall it sprouts honey mushrooms.
Credit: Shutterstock
A humongous fungus lurking underground in Michigan is exceptionally old, tremendously heavy and has a curiously low mutation rate, a new study finds.
Here are the fungus' impressive stats: It's at least 2,500 years old (although it's likely much older), weighs nearly 882,000 lbs. (400,000 kilograms) and spans about 75 hectares (0.75 square kilometers, or 140 American football fields). As for its mutation rate, or the rate at which random genetic tweaks occur, it's fleetingly low, said study co-principal investigator Johann Bruhn, a professor emeritus of plant sciences at the University of Missouri.
Bruhn first came across the absolute unit (Armillaria gallica) in the late 1980s, when he was doing an unrelated experiment in the forest of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He roped in two more fungal experts, James Anderson, now at the University of Toronto, and Myron Smith, now at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who are also co-principal investigators on the new study. The giant fungus stunned the researchers, who initially vastly underestimated its age and size. (Back then, they thought the fungus was about 1,500 years old, 220,000 lbs. (100,000 kg) and about 37 hectares (0.3 square km), according to their 1992 study published in the journal Nature.)
"We think that this slow mutation rate is perhaps key to the genetic stability of the humongous fungus and may even be a key reason for its great longevity," Bruhn told Live Science. [Microscopic Worlds Gallery: See Images of Fascinating Fungi]
On edit:
Forgot the link until seeing reACTIONary's post:
https://www.livescience.com/64343-humongous-fungus-in-michigan.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
