Why Some Mushrooms Glow in the Dark

The room can easily be split in two by asking one question: do you like mushrooms? I am an avid mushroom lover, while my partner is allergic to her. If there is ever a time I want to have a whole pizza to myself without having her stealing a slice, I'll get mushroom toppings. Due to my obsession, I have decided to explore the world of fungi, and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with what I found; glow in the dark mushrooms!

What is a Mushroom?

At the best of times, fungi are strange beings. They were once thought to be closely connected to plants, but they are now considered to be closer to animals. Mushrooms, or fungal fruit bodies (the part above ground), are familiar to us all as food. Yet, mushroom-forming fungus only creates these fruit bodies under specific conditions in the wild. The fungus' primary body is hidden in plain sight as a colony of white thread-like hyphae growing through a food source like wood or leaf litter. Fungal colonies can grow to be exceedingly huge and old if left alone. A colony of Armillaria solidipes in the United States is estimated to be thousands of years old and cover 9.6 kilometres squared of land.

What are Fruit Bodies?

To distribute their sexual progeny as spores, fruit bodies are formed. Certain fungi release spores into the air from the underside of their mushrooms, relying on air currents to disperse the spores across a large area. This procedure is helpful if the fungus is many metres up a tree's trunk. On the underside of logs, at ground level in a dense forest, and even underground, where truffles are created, wind speed is often low or non-existent.

So how may spores be dispersed far and wide if air movement is ineffective? Aromatherapy is one option. Truffles, which are the fruiting bodies of Ascomycete fungi, use their odour to attract fungivores like pigs and squirrels, who consume them and deposit spores in their faeces. A foul-smelling slime on stinkhorn mushrooms attracts flies and other insects. The flies consume the slime and unintentionally distribute the spores.

Luminosity

Many insects find light appealing as well, and to attract them, the fungus emits a soft green light. A team of Brazilian and American researchers looked at the pale green light emission from fungi to assess whether it attracted insects and whether brighter light conferred a selective advantage for spore dispersal. The researchers looked at Neonothopanus gardneri, a particularly intense emitter found at the base of coconut palms in Brazil. It was previously thought their light was emitted continuously as a by-product of some other round-the-clock metabolic process.

The fungus only lights at night, making it energy efficient; during the day, the light emission would be too dim to be seen. In any event, the optimal time for spore germination in canopy forests is at night, when the air is more humid. If the mushrooms only shine at night, the bioluminescence must have a function. Rove beetles invaded the luminous fruit bodies, according to camera observations. However, it's possible that something else drew these beetles in, such as odour. Experimental "mushrooms" constructed of clear acrylic resin were built to test the lighting effect mainly. They have a light-emitting diode that emitted light at the same wavelength as the mushrooms. The light would have appeared the same to the bugs. The illuminating plastic mushrooms attracted this and other green-light-sensitive insects, but non-illuminated controls attracted far less.

The primary question at hand now is would I eat a glow in the dark mushroom if it did cause harm? Would it give me superpowers like in Super Mario Bros? Would it taste like kryptonite? These are the questions that race through my mind daily. I can now finally begin my adventure to find a glow in the dark mushroom in the wild. Also, please do not go picking up and eating a wild mushroom. The species can be poisonous and highly harmful. Nature can be cruel; be cautious.

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