Predatory plants that feed on captured insects are known to all. True, they are microscopic, but their small size does not prevent them from hunting successfully in water or soil.
Worms, tiny insects, amoeba can become victims of a predatory fungus. Predators of the kingdom of mushrooms exist for more than 100 million yearsToday they are represented by several species. How can mushrooms hunt, which helps them digest their prey, and why do they not want to live like their usual counterparts do?
Mushroom Hunting Strategies
The mushroom picker can hunt due to its own sticky secretions. Microscopic living creatures, with which soils and waters are saturated to the limit, simply stick to the mycelium, after which its filaments contribute to the rapid growth of new organics to the total mass. The prey perishes, the juices from it are sucked out by hyphae - those threads from which the mycelium is formed as such. Adhesive organs can form in the form of heads, nets, they are not necessarily ordinary surfaces of the threads. Each predator species has its own characteristics of the adhesive system device.
And predatory mycelium may have a special tool for catching prey - clamps, consisting of three cells that allow you to catch nematodes. They are, for example, in dactillaria. When the first carnivorous fungi first appeared, approximately 100 million years old, the dexterous ring consisted of only one cell, but today evolution has allowed the fungi to have a more perfect variant - the ring swells 2 or 3 times when the nematode tries to penetrate it.
A microscopic worm dies, and the ring grows to prey in just a few hours, starting to fill it with the threads that make up the mycelium. They take away all the nutrients, leaving only the shell - it takes no more than a day.
How did you find out that in the past the predator mushroom was arranged differently? It's simple: scientists discovered it in amber, along with the usual prey - ancient nematodes.
Classification and features of carnivorous fungi
All species of mycelium that are capable of hunting were classified in the past as saprotrophs, only later they began to be considered as a separate group with their own ancient history.
The primary version of their classification can also be considered partly true, because in a situation where there is enough water and dead organics for them, they feed mainly on these substances. Other, more specialized varieties of predators feed mainly on live prey, but in its absence they also easily switch to organics in any available form.
With an abundance of food and water, some species of mycelium exist in the usual way, poorly demonstrating their predatory addictions. However, with a decrease in the amount of available resource, the mycelium receives a signal to grow traps with which it begins to hunt. More specialized predators are able to respond to traces of the presence, activity of nematodes, and other habitual prey. Having discovered a trace of nematodes, the mycelium begins to grow rings or adhesive organs precisely from the side where this signal was received.
Today, predatory fungi can be found on all continents; they are present within each climatic zone, living not only in the soil, but also in the root systems of plants, in mosses, and in the rhizosphere. Dactillaria, Tripospormna, and many more genera - all these are carnivorous fungi. Man actively studies these and other varieties. The practical interest in these studies opens the possibility of using fungi to combat nematodes, because microscopic worms are harmful to animals and plants.
Thus, predatory fungi do exist, they can hunt for microscopic microorganisms, they have special organs for catching nematodes, amoebas, and other victims. The kingdom of mushrooms is very diverse, it represents a mass of organisms with a variety of different ways of eating. Many of them are capable of parasitizing, others can create symbiosis, and still others are predators.
