New research shows that mushrooms and other fungi can survive better than their natural environment. What they found will tell us a lot about the evolution of these organisms and how they will react to global warming.
As one of the best discoveries of scientists, this temperature control was discovered by accident, one of the researchers was testing a thermal camera during the epidemic – and he saw that the mushrooms that grew in the nearby forests came cooler than the surrounding plants.
The researcher recruited a team of biologists from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and a colleague from the University of Puerto Rico to take a closer look at the process.
“Unlike animals and plants, temperature and humidity are unknown for fungi,” the researchers wrote in their published article. “Our data show that not only fungi, but also yeast and mold communities can maintain cooler temperatures than the environment they live in.”
Although mushroom freezing has been reported and observed, it has not been well studied. Here, the team analyzed mushrooms in the wild and other types of fungi in the lab to see the difference in temperature.
On average, mushrooms were found to be 2.9 °C (5.2 °F) cooler than ambient air, with a standard deviation of 1.4 °C (2.5 °F). With some mushroom species, the temperature of the mushroom was as cold as 5.9 °C (10.6 °F).
Through lab experiments where water and temperature can be manipulated, the researchers confirmed that fungi regulate their temperature through evapotranspiration, or the release of water into the atmosphere. A lot of water can be stored under the mushroom caps before being released slowly and evenly.
In addition, some types of fungi can do the same, when the regions are colder near the center. This seems to happen regardless of the outside temperature, even close to freezing.
“We show that yeasts and molds also live in colder environments than they live in and use evapotranspiration to lose heat,” the researchers wrote. “A bit cold seems to be a universally recognized trait.”
As fungi make up about 2 percent of the Earth’s ecosystem, their cooling can help improve the environment. The researchers put this to the test by creating a basic coolant made from mushrooms as part of their research. They used it Agaricus bisporus reducing the temperature inside a closed space – more evidence of the cooling power of mushrooms.
This thermoregulation is important not only to understand more about fungi but also to adapt to climate change. These organisms play an important role in the world’s environment, and we need to know how they will behave in the future and how they can help other plants and animals to adapt.
What the team didn’t get into here is why mushrooms like to be cold. Previous research suggests that the loss of water vapor allows fungi to create local air to help disperse their spores, but many questions remain.
The researchers write: “The temperature variation of fungi according to their environment involves several factors that require further study.
“The temperature of wild mushrooms, as well as yeasts and molds, depending on the environment they live in, varies by species, which suggests that there may be differences in the different types of their ability to handle heat.”
Research has been published in PNAS.
