Mushrooms Create Their Own Wind in Order to Spread Their Spores

Mushrooms take a much more proactive role in ensuring their spores are distributed than previously believed, a team of researchers found.

Biologists have long believed that the spores created by a mushroom's cap are forced to wait around for a gust of wind to carry them forth.

"Most people, even scientists, think of mushrooms simply as machines for producing spores," Marcus Roper of the University of California-Los Angeles said in a statement. "The more spores each machine produces, the more likely it to successfully colonize new habitats."

Mushrooms are not quite so eager to leave it up to chance, according to the new study presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics.

"Our research shows that these 'machines' are much more complex than that: they control their local environments, and create winds where there were none in nature," said Emilie Dressaire, a professor of experimental fluid mechanics at Trinity College.

Using high-speed videography and mathematical model of spore dispersal in commercially grown oyster and shiitake mushrooms, the researchers discovered that the fungi released water vapor that the cooled the air immediately around it. The resulting convective cells then pushed the air surrounding the mushroom.

Because the air is strong enough to lift the spores to freedom, mushrooms are able "to disperse their spores even in the most inhospitable of settings."

The researchers believe this same process may be used to varying degrees by all mushroom-producing fungi, including those that cause disease.

Fungi are the "dark matter of biology," Roper told LiveScience. So little is known about them, in fact, that estimates

Anne Pringle, a mycologist at Harvard University, recently showed that fungi spread their spores in other ways, including shooting them out quickly and in quick succession.

Knowing this, she points out, is important when it comes to understanding the spread of fungal pathogens.