Sydney Glassman

And usually they just do it between bacteria, but fungi, in this case, fungi took the genes from the bacteria.

So this is like a very strange, rare cross-kingdom horizontal gene transfer occurrence where the fungi took the genes from the bacteria that enabled them to degrade charcoal.

Back to like them being dormant underground, how long can these fungi stay underground kind of waiting for a forest fire environment?

Could they presumably like hundreds of years?

Like they're just sitting there waiting?

Potentially.

Like actually one thing I really love about fungi is there's a lot not known about them.

So there's potentially five to eight million species of fungi out there and there's not very many mycologists.

Like the Mycological Society of America annual meeting, like our largest annual meeting,

might have like 250 to 500 people.

So the amount of mycologists or fungal experts relative to species is low.

And like, we actually do not know how long these things could be sitting around.

Like it's possible that if a forest doesn't burn for, you know, 50 or a hundred years, the sclerotia, these, these resistant propagules could be sitting there that whole time.

And, um,

We we there's very simply very limited research on showing like how long spores can actually persist.

And the other thing is, we don't know if they're like waiting in the soil for the fire or it's possible they could have dispersed in right after the fire.

Now, the cleanup angle to me, this is fascinating to the funguses, the fungi, the fungal fungus.

OK, whatever.

You know the word.

Do they come in after the fire and help the environment regenerate?