From body invasion Alien-style to hallucinogenic poisons and limpet mines, fungi have astonishingly creative ways of dispatching their foes
(Image: Eye of Science/SPL)
White muscardine (Beauveria bassiana)
POACHER TURNED GAMEKEEPER
A deadly attacker of commercial silkworm cultures, this fungus absorbs water and nutrients from its host, causing its body to harden and the wings to drop off adult specimens. The fungus then emerges as a fine white powder of spores that can infect other insects. In natural environments the white muscardine probably helps to control silkworm populations, preventing large-scale defoliation of mulberry trees. It has also been harnessed as a bio-insecticide to control pests such as whiteflies and termites. It is seen here on the surface of a mosquito larva.
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(Image: Rich Reid/Getty)
Birch maze gill (Lenzites betulina)
SEARCH AND DESTROY
This uncommon parasite of the very common wood-eating turkey tail fungus (Trametes versicolor) kills its victim, occupies its territory and exploits its food sources. Its bloodlust not sated, it expands by killing surrounding fungi non-parasitically using volatile and diffusible chemicals.
(Image: Harry Evans)
Ophiocordyceps amazonica
THE EMBALMER
This gruesome customer fills the body of a grasshopper or other insect victim with hyphae and mummifies it. Rather in the manner of the spawn in the film Alien, it then erupts through the mummified wall in the summer months to produce a fruit body with a strawberry-like head.
(Image: Alex Hyde/naturepl.com,)
Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria)
ONE BITE AND YOU鈥橰E FLYING
A close relative of the death cap, the classic head of this toadstool is thought by some to be the origin of Santa Claus鈥檚 costume. It is a serious poisoner with hallucinations to go with it. If Santa ate it he might think his reindeer were flying. Reindeer do eat it, and might think they are flying too.
(Image: Barrie Watts/Getty)
The death cap (Amanita phalloides)
ORGAN GRINDER
A mycorrhizal mutualist that helps to feed woodland trees, the death cap is not good news for us. A human consumer does not know they have been poisoned until 10 or more hours after eating. By that time, the fungal toxins, which inhibit an enzyme critical to cell metabolism, have already caused serious damage to the internal organs starting with the liver. Death usually follows between 6 and 16 days later.
(Image: George Barron)
Harposporium crassum
WORM KILLER
Nematodes should beware of the Harposporia genus of fungi. Their modus operandi varies. One clan member has sticky knobs on stalks protruding from its hyphae that adhere like limpet mines to nematodes that touch them. Others make spores shaped like sickles, crescents or stiletto heels that stick in the nematode鈥檚 throat. From wherever the weapon has lodged hyphae grow out and digest the body from inside.
(Image: Robert Pickett/Papilio/Corbis)
Sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare)
A MULTI-TOOL OF DESTRUCTION
A common sight on tree stumps and fallen wood in deciduous woodlands in Europe and North America, this fungus produces chemicals toxic to some small soil invertebrates (and to us if we ingest them), as well as volatiles with which it can spray competitors. Weapons known as stephanocysts attached to the gills of its attractive yellow fruit body can also capture passing nematodes by adhesion.
Read more: 鈥�This means spore: The brutal world of fighting fungi鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣atural born killers鈥�
