MYFA 5: What Does a Mushroom Hear?

Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) by Björn S…

Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) by Björn S…

Summary

How do mushrooms know the world around them? In this episode, we explore just a few of the ways that a fungus (without a brain, ears, or eyes) can feel with precision. Mendel gets extra nerdy on this one.

This is an excerpt from episode 5 of our Patreon-exclusive series: “Meet Your Fungal Associates”.

Pay what you can – as little as a $1 per month – to unlock this entire episode, and our whole back catalogue of bonus mini-episodes.


Show notes

Featured on this episode is Willoughby Arevalo, author of DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil.

Thanks as always to Kmathz for the kick-butt theme song for this series. Other music in this episode was produced by Radioactive Bishop, Jonathan Scherk, Cat Can Do, and Kmathz.

You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us.  Our website is futureecologies.net.  We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, iNaturalist, Soundcloud and Youtube.  We’re an independent production, and you can support us on Patreon - our supporters have access to cool supporter-only mini-episodes and other perks.

This podcast includes audio recorded by Kinoton, and tim.kahn, protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses, and accessed through the Freesound Project.

Sources for this episode are:

Bunyard, Britt A. “Which Way Is Up? Fungal Gravitropism.” Fungi Magazine, 2012, pp. 26–28.

Chen, Alice W. “Chapter 4 - Shiitake Bag CultivationMushroom Growers' Handbook 2, Mushworld, 2005, pp. 73–87

Yu, Zhenzhong, and Reinhard Fischer. “Light Sensing and Responses in Fungi.” Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2018, pp. 25–36., doi:10.1038/s41579-018-0109-x.

If you want to learn more about the very latest research in quorum-sensing bacteria, check out TWIM 210 - The Waze of Microbes

This episode of Future Ecologies was recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.