Mushrooms Create Their Own Wind To Spread Spores

A new study solves a long standing mystery on how mushrooms propagate. The study reveals that mushroom have a remarkable ability to create their own wind and scatter the spores as far as possible.

For the survival of its species, the mushroom must propagate and release spores at quickly as possible. The spores of a mushroom are what seeds are to a plant. For that matter, even plants use several methods to spread their seeds. They depend on the wind, water, gravity or even animal dispersion to spread their seeds.

Till date, biologists believed that the spores produced by the mushroom's cap are carried away by the wind and strewn over a vast area. But then mushrooms continue to disperse their spores even in the absence of wind. The way mushroom propagate was an unsolved mystery until Emilie Dressaire, a professor of experimental fluid mechanics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., along with Marcus Roper of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) came up with their interesting find.

According to the latest finding, the fungi create their own wind by releasing water vapor that cools the air. This further creates convective cells that push the air around in the vicinity of the fungi. The air movements created by the fungi is strong enough to lift the spores from the mushroom and blow it across a vast area.

The researchers concluded that even in an inhospitable surrounding, the mushrooms are capable to disperse their spores and propagate.

"Most people, even scientists, think of mushrooms simply as machines for producing spores," Roper said. "The more spores each machine produces, the more likely it to successfully colonize new habitats." But with this study is very clear that there an unseen mechanism behind this.

With this finding the researchers show that the manner in which the fungi propagates is much complex. They not just control the local environment but also create winds in their vicinity.

Dressaire concluded, "That's pretty amazing, but fungi are ingenious engineers."

The findings were presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) held in Pittsburgh, Pa.