Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Permo-Triassic Fungal Apocalypse

Jennifer Frazer in her Artful Amoeba Blog offers a fascinating article about a layer of possible fungal mycelia in sedimentary rocks approximately 250 million years ago during the the Permian-Triassic Extinction.   Scientists have referred to the organism as Reduviasporonites but they bear a close resemblance to the modern Rhizoctonia solani.  A friend of mine spent her years in graduate school attempting to identify species of this organism at the U of MN Plant Pathology Laboratory.  She would grow the organisms in culture and then use a doughnut hole cutter to extract mycelia of the same age for chemical analysis.  The organism is important both as a plant decay fungi and in some cases mycorrhizal (breaking down nutrients in soil allowing plants to grow).

During this period of Great Dying 75% of the terrestrial land life was destroyed.  It would have been a perfect time for this organism to ingest decaying vegetation.  When the vegetation was consumed the organism would produce a scleroderma like structure (a tight ball of mycelia) to ride out a period with low amounts of decaying vegetation.  Both the filamentous and scleroderma-like structure are found in the fossil record.

Nicholas P. Money, professor of Botany, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio has written a book covering the more recent success of fungal plant pathogens in wiping out trees and other species.  His book is titled The Triumph of Fungi - A Rotten History.  He lays out the moderately successful and sometimes futile attempts of humans to control destructive adaptable fungal pathogens.





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