Photo Insert, Entangled Life

Kika, the truffle-hunting Lagotto Romagnolo

Piedmont white truffles, Tuber magnatum

An illustration from around 1890 captioned, “Truffle-hunting—Trained hogs rooting for the valuable esculent.” The hogs are wearing muzzles to prevent them from eating the truffles they unearth.

Foraging behavior of the wood-rotting fungus Phanerochaete velutina. The three images depict a single fungus growing over a period of 48 days. The mycelium starts in an exploratory mode, proliferating in all directions. When the fungus discovers something to eat, it reinforces the links that connect it with the food and prunes back the links that don't lead anywhere.

Mycelium of a wood-rotting fungus exploring and consuming a log.

The bread mold Neurospora crassa, solving microscopic labyrinths. Black arrows mark the direction of growth of the fungus at branch points and at the entrance to the labyrinths. Image reproduced from Held, et al. (2010).

Bioluminescent ghost mushrooms, Omphalotus nidiformis.

Bioluminescent mycelium of the bitter oyster, Panellus stipticus, growing on wood chips. The first submarine, Turtle, developed during the American Revolutionary War, used glowing fungi to illuminate its depth gauge. English coal miners in the nineteenth century reported fungus on pit props that cast enough light to see their hands by.

Ernst Haeckel’s lichens, published in Art Forms in Nature (1904).

Beatrix Potter’s illustration of a Cladonia lichen.

A carpenter ant infected with the “zombie fungus” Ophiocordyceps lloydii. Two fungal fruiting bodies sprout from the body of the ant. Sample collected in the Brazilian Amazon.

A carpenter ant infected with Ophiocordyceps camponoti-nidulantis. The fungus is visible as a white furry coating, and the stalk of the fungal fruiting body emerges from the back of the ant’s head. Sample collected in the Brazilian Amazon.

A carpenter ant infected with Ophiocordyceps camponoti-atricipis. A fungal fruiting body sprouts from the ant’s head. Sample collected in the Brazilian Amazon.

A carpenter ant infected with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. The white spines belong to a different fungus, a “mycoparasite,” that infects Ophiocordyceps fungi living on insect bodies. Sample collected in Japan.

Ophiocordyceps growing around an ant’s muscle fibers. Scale bar = 2 micrometers.

A collection of mushroom stones from Guatemala, photographed in the early 1970s. Around two hundred such stones are thought to survive. These statues suggest that the ceremonial consumption of psilocybin mushrooms dates back at least until the second millenium BCE.

Interconnections between networks of brain activity during normal waking consciousness (left), and after an injection of psilocybin (right). Different networks are depicted as small colored circles around the rim of each figure. Following an injection of psilocybin, a tumult of new neuronal pathways arise. The ability of psilocybin to change people’s minds seems related to these states of cerebral flux. Image reproduced from Petri, et al. (2014).

Mycorrhizal fungus living inside a plant root. The fungus is depicted in red, and the plant in blue. The finely branched structures within the plant cells are known as “arbuscules” (“little trees”) and are the site of exchange between the plant and fungus. Scale bar = 20 micrometers.

Mycorrhizal fungus growing into a plant root. The fungus is depicted in red, and the edge of the plant’s root in blue. The inside of the root is densely inhabited by fungus. Scale bar = 50 micrometers.

The mycoheterotroph Voyria tenella growing in a rainforest in Panama. Mycoheterotrophs—”hackers” of the wood wide web—have lost the ability to photosynthesize and draw their nutrients from mycorrhizal fungal networks that lace their way through soil.

The mycoheterotroph Monotropa uniflora, or “ghost pipe,” growing in Adirondack Park, New York.

The mycoheterotroph Sarcodes sanguinea, John Muir’s “glowing pillar of fire,” growing in the El Dorado National Forest in California.

The mycoheterotroph Allotropa virgata, or “candycane,” growing in Salt Point State Park in California.

Intimacies within intimacies. The roots of the mycoheterotroph Voyria tenella are densely inhabited by mycorrhizal fungi. In A, fungi are visible as a light-colored ring around the edge of the root. In B, the fungi are depicted in red and the plant material is not shown. Scale bar = 1 millimeter. Image reproduced from Sheldrake, et al. (2017)

Mycorrhizal fungi living inside a root of the mycoheterotroph Voyria tenella. The fungus is depicted in red, and the plant root in grey. A to D show the same section of root with the plant tissue made increasingly transparent. Scale bar = 100 micrometers. Image reproduced from Sheldrake, et al. (2017)

The roots of the mycoheterotroph Voyria tenella are poorly adapted to the task of absorbing water and minerals from the soil and have evolved into fungal “farms.” Note the mycorrhizal fungal hyphae trailing off the roots. Fragments of soil remain caught in the sticky mycelial web. This is a rare glimpse of the fungal connections that link plant roots with their surroundings.

Mycorrhizal fungal mycelium on the roots of the mycoheterotroph Voyria tenella.

A map of a shared fungal network made by Kevin Beiler. The green shapes are Douglas fir trees, and the straight lines indicate linkages between tree roots and mycorrhizal fungi. The black dots mark the points where Beiler collected samples. Genetically identical fungal networks are outlined in different colors. Networks formed by the mycorrhizal fungus Rhizopogon vesiculosus are shaded in blue, and those formed by the fungus Rhizopogon vinicolor are shaded in pink. The black border marks the 30 × 30 meter plot, and an arrow points to the most highly connected tree, which was linked to 47 other trees. Image reproduced from Beiler, et al. (2009).

Peter McCoy’s experiment with Pleurotus. The oyster mushroom is growing on a diet of nothing but used cigarette butts. The outside of a cigarette filter can be seen smeared across the inside of the jar.