Largest Living Organism Is A Fungus

Makarand writes "A single enormous underground fungus found growing in a Canadian forest and estimated to between 2000 and 8500 years old could easily be the largest known living organism on earth. This fungus is believed to have begun its life as a microscopic spore and then grown to cover an area of around an area of 9.65 square kilometers. That it is a single organism was confirmed by collecting samples of the fungus from different parts of the forest and observing their reactions as they were grown together on Petri dishes. Fungal growths have the ability to distinguish their own growths from other fungal individuals."

Comments

It thas been rumored..

[ewhenn]

That the guiness book of world records is sponsoring an event to use it to attempt create the worlds largest pizza.

Re:It thas been rumored..

[Mysticalfruit]

Forest managers may also want to consider which species to focus on during planting and harvesting. "When planting, they may want to introduce less susceptible trees--such as western larch, western white pine, and ponderosa pine--and harvest the more susceptible trees during thinning."

I'm not a forest manager by any stretch of the imagination, but doesn't this seem wrong? So you come into forest that's been living in ecolibrium for thousands of years and decide... "Well, since were gonna be cutting lots of trees down, lets replace them with trees that are less susceptible to this fungus..."

Now granted, you are changing the ecolibrium by cutting down the trees, but I think introducing trees that aren't native to that part of the country or replacing a whole section of forest with one type of tree is just a bad idea...

What a good example of this... goto a place like Quabbin (in Massachusetts) and go into the parts of the forest where they planted row after row of white pine trees and nothing else. Turns out that water perculating through the pine needles on the ground changes the PH level drastically enough that the forests are barren. There's no underbrush, just short pine trees that won't make it to maturity since all the other pine trees have now crowned (only have branches with needles on the tops (which are 50-70 ft above the ground). If you throw down a blanket and sit for a while, you notice a couple of things. Firstly, dead silence. Because the pine trees have pushed out everything else, there's no habitat to support any animals. Secondly, it's cool and dark. Even on a hot summer day, the trees block out so much light it makes it impossible for undergrowth.

A positive note to this is that as these forests age, trees die and make openings and the ecology is starting to change. Also, this makes up a very small percentage of the managed land at a place like Quabbin. I've also come across a couple areas where they've cut down the trees (these are 600' x 500', ripped out the stumps and then used a bulldozer to score up the ground. They then put wires from the trees on either side of the clearing to encourage birds. I've seen a before and after of one of these and you end up with a nice field of wild flowers and a breaks in the forest to encourage diversity.

Yes, but how many Volkswagen bugs...

[Ieshan]

The article does give some very interesting statistics, but I'd be interested to know if any Astronomers can estimate how many Volkswagen Bugs this fungus might occupy...

So, what did one moss say to another?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I heard you're a fun guy!'

Um?

[addaon]

Except of course the fact their method of verification worked at all invalidated it. After all, two separate, unattached pieces of tissue, even if taken the same creature, can hardly be considered to be the same organism. They may be genetically identical copies of each other, but they have the opportunity to develop separately. What verification is their that the giant fungus is not really a couple of dozen, slowly having developed and broken off from the original growth?

Re:Um?

[PurpleFloyd]

No, but separate cells in a mushroom or slime mold are. The important thing is that each cell can communicate with its neighbors, and has some role to play in a larger system. Also, it would have to communicate intracellularly, or it could never reproduce. That's the Central Dogma of molecular biology: DNA->RNA->proteins. Any organism which lacked intracellular communication would die almost immediately.

Even assuming you meant "intercellular," however, the story mentioned that the cells responded differently towards each other than they did towards "outsiders." If this is the case, then the cells must have some form of communication with the outside world, and with each other. Ergo, it's a single organism, since the cells communicate. Whether it's a fungus doesn't matter; whether it has cells that communicate with each other does.

Hah

[orangesquid]

Well of course Windows XP is a fungus, what did you *think* it was? ;)

But anyway, here's another story, seemingly on the same growth:
Armillaria in Oregon
Here's some information about this type of fungus:
Armillaria tree growth

The fungus...

[SixArmedJesus]

"Look Mario! I think the fungus is trying to help us!"

Aspen Trees

[asdfx]

It was my understanding that the largest living organism may be an Aspen forest. Aspens reproduce through runners, so it is possible that an entire aspen forest can actually be one organism. I'm sure you can find aspen forests larger than 10 square kilometers, but of course there could be many different plants there. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if it were the oldest.

Standard units people!

[Sentry21]

From the article:

The clone of Armillaria ostoyae--the tree-killing fungus that causes Armillaria root disease--covers an area of 9.65 square kilometres, about the size of 6000 hockey rinks or 1600 football fields.

Talk about frustrating. Hockey rinks? Football fields? I thought the standard unit of area was olympic-sized swimming pools now. Can journalists just not keep up?

--Dan

isn't this an american fungus / forest?

[ndevice]

it could be just me, but the way I read the article was that the fungus was discovered in an OREGON forest, and the data was collected by the USDA. Does anyone want to tell me where there's an Oregon in Canada?

Of course, the poster might not have read the article carefully and just sourced it as Ottawa, Ontario, taken from the first line.

It used to be a fungus, now it's a bigger fungus

[DeadSea]

I recall having read about the discovery of a huge fungus several year ago. That one must have been a different organism as the page I linked to says its in Oregon. Interestingly, this page gives credit for the largest fungus found in 1992 in Washington state.

At the time of the original large fungus discoveries, I recall that the largest living organism was considered to be a tree. Actually, grove of aspen trees that all shared the same roots.

When the aspen trees were discovered, they replaced some giant sequoia which had long been considered both the largest and fastest growing organism on earth.

Canadian/American unit conversion

[jakedata]

This article shed some light on a different subject as well.

The typical American unit of area, the football field converts to the Canadian (metric?) unit of area, the hockey rink with a ratio of 6000hr/1600ff or 3.75 to 1

Very helpful information.