Mushrooms are about a billion years older than the first humans. They appeared on this planet even before the first vertebrates. Now scientists believe that fungi evolved from colorless primitive unicellular flagellar organisms that live in water.
It is difficult to understand who these ancestors of the fungi were - plants or animals … In the same way, it is now difficult to attribute mushrooms to any of these biological kingdoms. At the beginning of the twentieth century, mushrooms were attributed to lower plants, and now they are considered an intermediate form, which is nevertheless closer to animals.
What brings mushrooms closer to animals? Outwardly, they look like small trees, since they do not move, but internally, as it turned out, they are closer to us. These are many signs: biochemical, phylogenetic, fungi contain chitin in their cell walls, like insects, they produce urea, which happens only in animals. In addition, for reproduction, fungi have one smooth flagellum, similar to a human sperm. Well, now that it has become possible to look into the genome, scientists have moved the mushrooms even closer towards animals.
Mushroom hyphae. RIA Novosti / Evgeny Kolotev
A billion years ago, when only small worms crawled on the surface of the Earth and wingless insects and centipedes were running, mushrooms have already created their own "Internet" - a device for transmitting biological information. To do this, they have spread a network of hyphae all over the planet - these are threadlike outgrowths that are needed to absorb water and nutrients. Naturally, many plants "rebelled" - after all, the mushrooms took their place under the Sun! But then the mushrooms offered a new kind of cooperation: symbiosis, namely convenient "root covers" - mycorrhiza, with the help of which other plants took advantage - they were not only protected from drying out, but could also pump the necessary nutrients through the hyphae network.
Ectomycorrhiza formed by the mycelium of the fly agaric. C BY 2.5 / Ellen Larsson - R. Henrik Nilsson, Erik Kristiansson, Martin Ryberg, Karl-Henrik Larsson (2005) / Root-tip mycelia of the Amanita type
Of course, this reasoning is metaphorical - plants, like mushrooms, do not know how to reason and draw conclusions about their benefits. But evolution has run in a variant that suits all coexisting species.
There were also some achievements in the ancient history of mushrooms: for example, giant mushrooms that reached a height of 8 and a half meters! Scientists named them prototaxites (Latin Prototaxites). Isn't it true, if you imagine the Devonian world (meaning the Devonian period - 419-358 million years ago), and huge eight-meter mushrooms that rise above lush green forests (by the way, no more than a meter high), and under them - a developed the "mushroom internet" system, then they most of all resemble communication towers ?! Found fossils of prototaxites haunted paleontologists.
Promotional video:
Fossil prototaxite of the Devonian period. C BY-SA 4.0 / GJ Retallack / Apex opf the & quot; Schunnemunk tree & quot; of Prototaxites loganii from the middle Devonian Bellvale Sandstone near Monroe, New York
The first giant formations were found and described by the Canadian geologist American scientist John William Dawson, and it was in 1857. He thought it was a specimen of petrified rotten yew (Taxus), which is why he named them Prototaxites. Then scientists decided that it was a huge seaweed, but the rings found on the cut of the trunk haunted. Could it be annual rings? And again doubts - they do not in any way resemble tree cuts, rather they are tubes that go inside …
Sectional prototaxites. Photo: Penhallow, for Dawson 1888 - Hueber 2001
And just recently, Francis Hueber of the American National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History), having analyzed sections of numerous prototaxite specimens from different countries, proved that it is a mushroom. However, it may still be a lichen (a mixture of fungus and algae).
One can imagine how long ago the mushrooms "preoccupied" the problem of forming their own communication system. Recent experiments with tomatoes have shown that mushrooms transmit "information" rather quickly.
Hyphae under an inverted log. CC BY-SA 3.0 / TheAlphaWolf
Chinese scientists conducted an experiment on tomatoes connected by a "mushroom network" and a control group of plants, where mycorrhiza was not allowed to grow. Researchers inoculated one of the plants with a fungus, then, after 65 hours, infected another and looked at its resistance to disease. It turned out that in the presence of a fungal connection, the second plant was less susceptible to disease and if it did get sick, it tolerated it more easily than single tomatoes.
Is the information actually being transmitted? It depends on what is considered information.
Alexander Kurakov, head of the Department of Mycology and Algology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, explains:
“Indeed, plants are very interconnected through mycorrhiza, - for example, in the forest biocenosis: orchids, and wintergreens, and arboreal, and herbaceous … They can exchange nutrients, exchange water, signal something. They can and do that. But this is all that “information” that can be talked about in this case. I would call mycorrhiza - new opportunities. As a person, he gets into a car and can move quickly, that is, he acquires new opportunities. And the plant, with the help of mycorrhiza, acquires, for example, drought resistance. But nothing more."
Anna Urmantseva