500 million years ago, aquatic plants, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t get up to land. That is, until fungi suddenly showed up. Fungi might not have been very impressive, but they helped the aquatic plant go up to land using fungal mycelium networks. Fungal mycelium networks are root-like things that connect to plants and can transfer many elements including water, nitrogen, and carbon. Even now, 90 percent of plants depend on symbiotic fungi.
Fungal networks and plants were the main reason our earth is inhabitable by us now as the fungi had lowered the carbon dioxide levels by 90 percent. Even though humans have drastically increased carbon dioxide emissions, the levels still aren’t as high as the pre-fungal time period. Scientists think that if fungi were able to lower carbon dioxide 500 million years ago, then they can lower carbon dioxide right now.
There is growing awareness about the required interconnectedness of our earth, and the recent research about fungi is proof of humanity’s interest in fungi. Even though there are many ways to save our planet with fungi, we just simply don’t know enough about them to problem-solve with them yet.
Fungi can be very useful in other ways too. Rare types of fungi can shape powerful antiviral compounds that help defend bees from colony collapse disorder. Colony collapse disorder is when the worker bees leave the colony and never come back, abandoning a queen bee, plenty of food, and a few bee nurses to care for the queen. Fungi can also break down poisonous stuff in a process called mycoremediation. Mycoremediation is when fungi use some unknown method to decontaminate the environment. One last perk about fungi is that fungi can create many different types of stuff with a different process called mycofabrication.
Fungal networks and plants were the main reason our earth is inhabitable by us now as the fungi had lowered the carbon dioxide levels by 90 percent. Even though humans have drastically increased carbon dioxide emissions, the levels still aren’t as high as the pre-fungal time period. Scientists think that if fungi were able to lower carbon dioxide 500 million years ago, then they can lower carbon dioxide right now.
There is growing awareness about the required interconnectedness of our earth, and the recent research about fungi is proof of humanity’s interest in fungi. Even though there are many ways to save our planet with fungi, we just simply don’t know enough about them to problem-solve with them yet.
Fungi can be very useful in other ways too. Rare types of fungi can shape powerful antiviral compounds that help defend bees from colony collapse disorder. Colony collapse disorder is when the worker bees leave the colony and never come back, abandoning a queen bee, plenty of food, and a few bee nurses to care for the queen. Fungi can also break down poisonous stuff in a process called mycoremediation. Mycoremediation is when fungi use some unknown method to decontaminate the environment. One last perk about fungi is that fungi can create many different types of stuff with a different process called mycofabrication.
