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Fungi in general are about twice as old as sharks. Roughly a billion years vs ~450 million years.
The point is there just weren't any which had bacteria to decompose trees, as no bacteria had evolved the ability yet. Until there were. Took millions of years though.
Fun fact, now we have mushrooms which can deal with plastic.
Pestalotiopsis microspora is a type of endophytic fungus discovered in the Amazon rainforest in 2011 which contains bacteria that can biodegrade and break down synthetic plastic polymers.
that's what i was thinkin... surely single-cell eukaryote (fungi) is earlier than complex eukaryote (shark)?
you'd think so, but sharks were in fact the first lifeform to be summoned from the astral planes, everything else evolved from a single shark cell that had the right mutations to survive (all sharks simply died within minutes until plants had created enough oxygen for them to breathe, at which point they died within days until the evolution of other animals)
Thank God for fungi. They do so much for us and now eating plastics. We really need something to eat it all
There's also fungi which can use radiation as a source of energy, radiotrophic fungi, and we've been thinking about using them as radiation shields in spacecraft.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus#Use_in_human_spaceflight
The reputation cordyceps gave fungi is really unfair IMO, they mostly chill shroomy buddies that poop food and eat poop
cordyceps are to fungi what barnacles are to arthropods, horrifying twisted versions of the clade
Of all the arthropods you could have singled out as the scary one, you picked Barnacles?
I think these fit the idea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizocephala
What the fuck?!
you have seen how they look on the inside, yes? They bring about existential dread with how they've been twisted from the arthropod baseline, they're like the creatures in Man After Man.
TIL that barnacles are crustaceans. Had thought that were mollusks. Yeah. I'm going to have to agree with them bring a horrifying twisted version of the clade.
They are great for human ingestion, I take cordyceps medicinally regularly.
Is this a good thing? Consuming plastic means releasing all the carbon that they're made of.
Awesome, now they'll just dump all the plastic in the Amazon and congratulate themselves for doing the right thing
What Amazon? Is that one of those sheerwood forest things?
Fungi are pretty awesome. We can decompose plastic with them. Engage in inter dimensional astral travel with them. And have a nice trip by a campfire without ever leaving the chair.
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