We Can't Find Most Of The World's Fungi
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- Most of the world’s fungi aren’t just rarely seen or found solely underground. They’re flat out invisible - and that’s becoming a big problem.
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Born too early to explore the galaxy, born too late to explore the Earth, born too large to see the dark fungal taxa.
oh you are here at the right time! if you can afford a decent scope, there's so many undescribed biotics and not near enough researchers. literally anyone can make preliminary discoveries
One of the fun facts about these fungi is that we found through DNA analysis that some fungi were named twice - once in their sexually reproductive mushroom form, and again as an imperfect asexually reproducing mold form.
There's a whole taxonomic mess about dual nomenclature in fungi that's been smoldering for years.
Or rather, has it been s-moldering?
@@NeatCrown😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Oh.
That's the problem with the morphological approach, especially in fungi. But, it was the best 'tool' they had.
This problem is made much larger by centering all research around the english langauge. some language traditions use different scientific nomenclature due to journal access issues.
Our lab has been researching the bacteria that causes citrus greening (Canditus Liberibacter) and it's tricky to culture as well. They live in the phloem of citrus plants, which spawns difficult questions of "what the heck do you use to mimic tissues to culture this?"
I'm not a scientist but maybe that tissue can be grown in a lab just like "cultured meat"?
Not a scientist, but what you are doing is sick. Good luck with it!
Yeah that's a toughy citrus greening is a big problem your doing work that will help the world m8 keep it up this seems huge
Is this a non profit lab?
I recently saw a yt vid about how multiresistant bacteria or at least parts of them are being spread by evaporation and rainwater. How is it with your research target, how do they spread?
"Now you will experience the TRUE POWER of the Dark Side of the Fungi"
-Darth Cordyceps
There's just SO MUCH life on this planet it's insane
Wanna know what's crazier?
According to science, every form of life on earth is actually you since we all evolved from the same single celled organsim
@@dakotabruce7773yes! This blows my mind too!
Nah, there is more dead stuff than life on earth by a huge margin.
good point google user alien9279...
One of the biggest problems facing mycologists is that there simply aren't enough taxonomists - the scientists who do the describing and naming of new species - both micro (as talked about here) and the macro (the ones that are visible to the naked eye). In Australia, the only way to learn mycological taxonomy is at a doctoral level of study and even then, that is pretty much not supposed to be the focus of your work.
Funding is also a big issue. No corporation can profit off these efforts (in the near future), and even the gov is reluctant to spend money on this (they need maybe 1 mycologist to consult for the occasional beef wellington cooked with toxic mushrooms). As a result, even those interested often do something else just to stay alive.
@@pierrecurie Indeed, yes. The unfortunate thing is, that most of the things that eventually could make a profit need the taxonomy done first! Governments and organisations simply do not understand that underlying concept. Fungi need to be found, described and named to have an identity that can be recognised - be that simply to know that they are there, or so that other mycologists and scientists can work on them to find their role in the natural world or what properties they have that might possibly save lives.
To me this sounds like part of the larger problem with research funding where basic research doesn't get funded as well as it should be because it doesn't sound as cool or applicable as more applied research.
@@PurpleShift42 Yes. And that is a very big problem.
Dark fungi having a separate naming system does make sense. Especially since we can only identify their existence through dna than why not name them based on the sequence of dna
Where and how are they finding the dark fungi DNA? How are they sampling the soil and coming to this conclusion without finding any parts of the thing? I'd love another video explaining this in more depth.
Think of it like how a crime scene investigator could pull a person's DNA from a single hair root - all life, particularly multicellular, sheds off dead cells, and some of those cells decay just right to leave the DNA intact, at least temporarily. So these scientists are taking samples of the soil and analyzing the little fragments of DNA that have been shed by all the different organisms in the area (the Mossy Earth UA-cam channel has a video called "What we found lurking in our abandoned quarry" that shows a similar process) and comparing the fragments to known critters
The same way a detective can find a suspect using fingerprints.
Yeah.
Imagine I find a hair follicle in the dirt, all I know is someone dropped it and the dna says “human” but I don’t know what they look like
For a more technical answer: Lets sample some soil. Now in the lab we can extract DNA from this sample, just like we can extract DNA from whole piece of mushroom or plant. This will extract the DNA from all the microorganisms in that soil sample, all mixed-up together. In the past, this would be near impossible to analyze but luckily now we have the technology to sequence mixed samples of DNA. Once we get the results back we can analyze all the different DNA sequences from the soil and compare it to DNA sequences of known species. Through this approach we realized that there is ton of unknown fungi, that we have never encountered before.
Okay so I know this question will probably get buried but I’ve been REALLY wanting an episode on this. Why are our noses so dang WEIRD looking? No other primate has a nose that looks like ours. Hell, no other *animal* has a nose that looks like ours.
The only other primate I can think of with a weirder looking nose than ours is the proboscis monkey with their squidward-like appearances.
Waves hand "these aren't the fungi you're looking for"
i love how chaotic fungi are
i felt like this was going to be a savannah episode when i saw the thumbnail. i always love your videos :D
I maintain a climate controlled holding facilities cleanliness and part of my job is to apply chemicals on the walls in these hot and humid rooms because even some of the best air filters can't keep out all the fungi. And the only way we know they're there is because of their spores in the room. But they grow on basically every surface. Idek what they are, and the only evidence I've seen is "dust" which is probably just their spores settling in one spot due to the circulation system.
I've always wondered this and knew it was likely fungal but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hear "dark fungi" and I cant help but think of dark matter. I know its just a turn of phrase, calling hidden and unknown things dark, but just imagine massive amounts of the universal void actually being filled by "invisible" fungal growth. It would be a pretty unique concept for a sci-fi movie.
That just sounds scary haha
I love how the introduction made me think "Oh so these fungi are like dark matter" just to name-drop "Dark Fungi" literally a couple seconds later ☠️
I've never heard the term "dark fungi"... and I work with fungi. There are just a bunch of undescribed species.
Next will be quantum fungi, or A.I. fungi.
I feel like there's a lot of microbial life which we don't know about because we can't culture it. I'm guessing it can't eat what we use to culture microbes.
Sure. I was thinking who knows there's some fungus that can only eats moss for example
oh, there's no doubt that there is still an incredible amount of undiscovered microbial life
It's partly about the nutrients we offer it and partly about things like growing temperature, humidity, oxygen levels - lots of stuff. For the longest time doctors thought urine was normally sterile; turns out, it totally isn't sterile most of the time, it's just that the bacteria that live in it don't culture easily, unless you have a (typical) urinary tract infection.
I love this show, thank you for making them!
“dark fungi!” literally laughed out loud. 😆
I laughed when she said it sounded cool. Like no it sounds silly.
@@fireflocswhy are you disrespecting dark fungi
There's precedent for using DNA as a type specimen: the Bulo Burti boubou (Laniarius liberatus), which turned out to be a rare color morph of L. nigerrimus. Unlike dark fungi, though, the scientists had a bird in the hand and described its colors.
I agree with this new naming method and i think it should work for more than just fungi but i have a solution for people who describe it physically after its been named by genetics, the first observer gets to chose the common name if they so choose
Think about it you get to be professionally unprofessional and set it's official nickname people can try to do that for species they discover but it doesn't always work
Two mushrooms walked into a bar and the bartender immediately yelled, "Get out I'd here! We don't serve your kind!"
Appalled, one of them quickly replied, "Why not? We're just a couple of fungi's."
I'm so glad mushrooms are becoming more mainstream lately (:
Ive alway loved foraging for edible wild mushrooms as well as just going out and observing the beauty nature has to offer. And the past ten years ive really gotten into mycology.
Watching fungi grow on agar petri dishes and other grow substrates is now my favorite thing to so. I love seeing the differences between various fungal species/strains/types and observing patterns between mushroom colonies and the fruit bodies they put off.
Great Video
It's like the problem with the Denisovans: no type specimen, just DNA
Dark Fungal Taxa is the name of my psychedelic techno rock band which has some r&b and dubstep influence
This is beyond fascinating like I knew about networks but not this
Thanks a lot 👍
Maybe we need to get Matt O'Dowd to weigh in on the possibility that the dark fungi *are* dark matter.....
Dark Fungus? I love that metal band🤘
Are waterborne fungus dangerous? Do they release spores unto the air?
I ask because in Hawaii it's everywhere.
Usually waterborne fungi have spores that travel through the water. Virtually all of the fungi that can cause illness in people are found on land, albeit in humid conditions. And only particularly dangerous to those with a weakened immune system
are people dangerous? it’s hard to say without knowing which one you’re talking about
Invisible fungi are everywhere, in everything you touch, all around you and inside you as well. We only tend to notice them when they cause problems for us. I wouldn't worry about them though, any more than I'd worry about bacteria that live in the same environments.
I've never heard amanita muscaria referred to as toadstools...
But amanita muscaria is the literal postcard discription of a toadstool…🍄
Lmk the joke I’m sure I’ve missed.
@@PoppyCorn144 no punch line, just only heard them referred to as their proper name or fly agarics
Using the term toadstool should be a crime.
I always think in these edge case debates "Why not both". Like, if the evidence of a species is purely genetic, with no intact samples, use genetic naming. When a species has an intact sample to work from, use taxonomic naming. Why is this so hard?
Because there is already enough confusion between mycologists due to the fact that different naming systems have been used throughout the decades to describe fungi, and sometimes the same species can be called tens of different ways. The system you proposed would add another layer of this issue, especially since maybe in the future some of the "genetic only" species might end up being morphologically described as well.
The key is the media. If the fungi are parasitic, then what is necessary is to replicate, in an artificial medium, the nutrients that are present in the host and which are required for the fungi's growth. This is not unprecedented in biology.
I just got very curious about why we inject things were we do. I'm not talking about drugs but I guess that's also included, my question is, why are some injections administered intramuscular, others in the belly or intravenous and why so many variations in needle sizes. I'd love a video on this!
first hidden plant, now hidden fungi, this world is pretty scary
If you think that’s scary, do not look up dark matter or dark energy.
@@canadiangemstones7636 I'm scared of that too
Minor nitpick, but the type specimen is not necessarily the first one found: it is the one designed as a primary reference for the species. If several specimens are found prior to the species being named, they will usually select the least damaged one as the holotype.
Do they know if the dna they are measuring come from a cell? Or were they just floating around having already been dead
Strands of DNA long enough to be identified as fungal presumably don't just spontaneously generate that often, and DNA doesn't last forever just lying around in the soil.
From the video, it sounded like they were testing soil samples for DNA and found a bunch, but couldn't find what it belonged to.
@@nottelling7438 ahhh ok thank you very much!
To be fair that is a very good, not easily dismissable question. There's plenty of leftover DNA in any substrate, especially in the soil, and even though it's true that it gets quickly degraded, there is always enough to be detected by instruments (what us microbiologists call environmental DNA, or eDNA). We cannot know whether the DNA we found comes from live or dead organisms, and here is where another technique helps us: RNA analysis. RNA is much, much less stable than DNA, so analysing it gives an idea of what live organisms are in the sample.
I realize it's waaaaay more complicated than this, but it'd be cool if we could replace the DNA of yeast with one of these Dark Fungi genomes. Then see if it will actually do anything. Probably not.
Or maybe that's how The Last of Us starts.
Well they're fungi! Of course they're in the dark! Just the way they like it!
However this is both fascinating and hilarious: nature really does "find a way" - in this case, it found a way to completely stump the scientific community :D
Just like Dark Fungi, I do the heavy lifting but I'm still invisible to people.
Invisible plants last week, this week it is invisible fungi, invisible animals next week?
Dark Fungi will be my new IGN
Fun guy checking in.
> new research
How is something we’ve known for over a century “new?”
well that's the name of my next band - DFT for short
*Dark Fungal Taxa* does sound rather fun.
Dark Funky Cab
It's branching exile!
So a shroom grew in my indoor plant it smelled terribly so i got rid of it and washed my plants thoroughly
Had i known it was a good thing
It will be interesting how this turns out, but like anything new the old ways die really hard before the new way is embraced. This will be a good starting point.
Doesn't this suggest you just need a different medium? It's a catch 22 since you have to locate and analyze one in situ but there's a decent chance most of them need the same thing from their host that they aren't getting from standard agar.
Loving the Elton John glasses 🤩
I think those are anti-migraine glasses! They block wavelengths of light that are suspected to trigger or worsen migraines. They just happen to also look classy 😎
@@HonestLeigh very cool! I had no idea.
As a microbiologist, I am so fascinated with those microscopic fungi. As much as I love my viruses and bacteria, I wanna go and get some mushrooms
What i wonder is the following. It was recently shown in a study that bacteria or parts of them, including all their multiresistances are being spread over the world by evaporation and rain water. Now how do these multiresistant bacteria effect Fungi? After all these resistances are towards substances originating from fungi as far as i understand it. Wouldn't that make these Fungi especially prone to being targeted by at least some of these bacteria strains?
Well, mycelium lives underground.. And maybe fruits in wierd ways?
"We can't find most of the world's fungi"
Have we checked your mom?
Is this the origin of the "micellar network" in Stark Trek Discovery?
Actually, I've enjoyed them on my cheese and saw them growing on my pizza after leaving it in he fridge for too long.
Have you found fungi, Gump?
I didn't know I was s'posed to be lookin'.
“most of the world’s fungi are unable to be seen”
ah, the John Cena species
Fungi refuse to adhere to your primative concepts of visibility.
Imma name it Amoongus Foongus Imposterus
Fungi, Mother Earth's Central Nervous System.
You said what? There’s invisible fun guys beneath my feet?
Hey I left that cheese in there exactly long enough
1. Is it possible that these dark fungi play a parasitic role in the mycelium beneath the ground?
2. How much does the Dark fungal DNA differ from the DNA of the mycelium surrounding it? (assuming that they are usually found near each other)
3. Could mycelium have developed a way to eject faulty or damaged DNA as a way to protect itself from undesirable mutations, and that could be the dark fungal DNA that they are finding? She says in the video that they don't have any life stage or structure, so I'm not sure what else that could implicate. (Not sure if this is outside the realm of possibility or not)
*By no means am I an expert on the matter just puttin some hypothesis out there
I love that dark fungi is a thing.
I hear people casually talking about terraforming otherplanets and have to laugh. Systems on Earth are so immeasurably complex and there is so much we don't know yet, how can we think we can replicate our world?
Have they check Terra Preta for dark fungii?
This could be part of the mystery.
According to recent informations, we're all fungi.
I want fungi to decompose my body when I die since I enjoy them while I'm living😊
This ought to give those Birds Aren't Real idiots some other joke to ruin.
How do they reproduce and spread spores through their environment if they don't produce a fruiting body?
Unfortunately since they're not very well studied we don't really know. In any case, it's not necessary for a fungus to have a macroscopic fruiting body to spread spores (think about molds, for example). So it's possible to hypothesise, for example, that their spores may be spread by other organisms inhabiting the soil.
Fungi are certainly very fun guys with all this hide and seek games... mmmmmh.
“Barely scratched the surface.” I see what the writers did there. Lol
The extant form of decay.
I wonder what other "Dark" things there are out there.. How many of them are detrimental to Life?.. The Universe is wild.
Are they spontaneously created?
Don't forget lichen! Ok that's a visible kind.
There's an international mycologist conference??? *books ticket*
5:26 ...conservation efforts? of organisms we cant even find and are vanishingly unlikely ever to be threatened?
I hope you guys get invited to the mycologist convention. Sounds like a fun time.
: ) from Malaysia
I want to meet this, Dark Fun Guy
I’m just a fun guy
💀
You literally are check the video from 3 days ago
We're over here dude come grab a seat
You like talking to trees
🥁👒
@SciShow, is plant lichen related to the lichen humans can get on their skin?
You mean _lichen planus_ ?
No.
Lichen is a symbiote of fungus & algae.
Lichen planus on skin seems to be an immune system flare up.
Lichen Planus, which presents on human skin, is a rash that just happens to look like lichen, not biologically related to the fungus/algae hybrid
Well animals came from fungi and are thusly fungi
@@Mattquaza
It's not a rash. It's hypertrophy of the cells.
@@M.sami12 my mistake
Dark fungi sounds like the name of a zombie virus
There's some sneaky fungus among us
mushroom mystery, indeed
Can those be not new species though, but cancer-like rejected and partially decomposed mutated cells of described ones?
It's a hypothesis that can't be completely dismissed, but I would say that due to the sheer amount of those DNA sequences and due to the fact that said sequences are not in portions of the genome where a tumor as we know them would need mutations I would say it is unlikely. It could be the case in certain instances though, so it may be interesting to look into!
💙
If I could snap my fingers and make the standard phylogenetic tree based on DNA alone, I would do it.
Weird question, if we know the DNA of them, that would imply we have viable genetic samples? Can we clone and lab grow those samples to get an observational recording?
Fungi know too much
Is the universe just full of dark fungi 🤔
I hope so, there was an excellent documentary about how you can use them to teleport... Oh wait, that was just Star Trek! 😛
Ok, this is weird. What else is there in between us, that we can't describe!!?
Did anyone else read the title as "why can't we eat most of the worlds fungi?
Hi Savannah!
Who knew mushrooms could be so mysterious?
Mushishi irl?