(Fungi & Insects) How slime mold helps to map Dark Matter and jungle tales of insect possesing fungi

SLIME MOLD
(not a fungi)


Image from here

Physarum polycephalum is a single-cell organism found in foraging woodlands. It is quite a fascinating organism, as it seems to have some kind of intelligence. Seduced by its favorite food – oat flakes – it for example solves mazes. As it’s main concern is to most effectively find and digest food, scientists let it recreate the Tokyo rail system by placing oat flakes on the respective location to the actual rail stations. Surprisingly, when compared to the connections of the real system, slime molds pattern was nearly identical. Similar experiments where conducted mapping streets connecting cities.
Scientist trust slime mold with even more intricate tasks: mapping the Universe’s invisible dark matter in 3D. Astronomers created an algorithm that is based on the growth pattern on slime mold to reveal the cosmic web that holds the Universe together. Slime mold – you deserve all our respect!  
 

Astronomers have gotten creative in trying to trace the elusive cosmic web, the large-scale backbone of the cosmos. Researchers turned to slime mold, a single-cell organism found on Earth, to help them build a map of the filaments in the local universe (within 500 million light-years from Earth) and find the gas within them. The researchers designed a computer algorithm inspired by the organism's behavior and applied it to data containing the positions of 37,000 galaxies ("food" for the slime mold) mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The algorithm produced a three-dimensional map of the underlying cosmic web's intricate filamentary network, the purple structure in the image. The three sets of inset boxes show some of those individual galaxies that were "fed" to the slime mold and the filamentary structure connecting them. The galaxies are represented by the yellow dots in three of the inset images. Next to each galaxy snapshot is an image of the galaxies with the cosmic web's connecting strands (purple) superimposed on them.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Burchett and O. Elek (UC Santa Cruz)
(image from here)

 

When it comes to art, science and slime mold, The Slime Mold Collective is probably the best address. Founded by artist Heather Barnett, this website serves as a discussion board, exchange and archive of projects with these strange blobs. She also gave a TED talk on her relationship working with it.

 

Before moving on to fungi and animals, a short intermission with a poetic, ritualistic art project that is called The Extinction Gong. It does the following: every time a species is declared excitant by scientist the gong sounds four times, alongside a computer voice calling out the Latin name of the animal or plant. All of this happens in real time. It that sense it is performing some kind of ritual, perhaps a ritual of mourning, every time a species dies.

 

Extinction Gong installed in the Tieranatomisches Theatre, Berlin, as part of The World as Forest (travelling exhibition, 2018).
Photo by Anexact Office.

 


I should warn you, dear reader. The following images are illustrating the brutality of nature in its most beautiful, sculptural form.

CORDYCEPS

Without knowing much about fungi and if this even has a place here, I would like to bring a parasitic fungi to your attention: Cordyceps. It includes around 400 species that are specialized on respective insects. Interestingly, the generic name Cordyseps is derived from the Greek word kordýlē, meaning "club", and the Latin word caput, meaning "head“. Indeed, once a spore enters the insect body it takes over their brain, making them do things that are atypical. When it’s taking fully over, the animal dies and the fruiting body of the mushroom grows out behind the head of the insect. When tall enough it bursts and releases its spores. A powerful method, sometimes infecting whole colonies of insects.

 


infected leafroller
credit: kim fleming


infected cricket
credit: Lazer Horse


infected moth
credit


infected stickinsect
credit: Andreas Kay

(more beautiful images here)

BBC did a short on them, narrated by our favorite David Attenborough. Probably the most and uncanny tale of the jungle, it is one of the most stunning shorts of all of their Planet Earth series.

 

MYCELIUM

I would like to close this post with a short remark on Mycelium. We talked about it a lot, so I'm not going to post anything informative here. But, my dear friend, musician and Miami based fruit god Otto von Schirach honored Mycelium with a song. Listen to it here