Kind of fungus

• Truffle is a delicious fungus lives underground on the roots of oak trees.
• Honey fungus is an enemy of trees, this fungus feeds on living and dead wood. If you see a cluster of honey fungi near a tree, you can be sure that the tree is either dead or about to die.
• Jelly antler grows on the ground, sprouting from old pieces of rotting wood.
• Fly agaric is a beautiful but highly poisonous, this brilliantly coloured fungus usually lives close to birch or spruce trees.
• Red cage fungus is about the size of a golf ball. The inside of the 'cage' contains slimy spores that are spread by flies.
• Lemon disc fungus feeds on dead wood, growing in dense cluster on old fallen branches.
• Oyster fungus is a edible fungus grows on dead or dying trees.

Tag :fungus kinds

Attacks by fungi
In Australia koalas can become infected with different kinds of fungi. One of the fungi is associated with certain types of eucalyptus tree, the trees that koalas lived in and feed on. The fungi are not passes from one koala to another, and most healthy koalas are not killed by them. Koalas are not the only victims of fungi. A fungus carried around by beetles, for example, caused the Dutch elm disease that wiped out many of Britain's elm tree in the 1970s.

Why does bread go mouldy?
Bread is an ideal food for many fungi. Their spores are everywhere in the air, and as soon as you take out a loaf of bread, some mould spores fall on it. Long before you see any furry mould on the bread, moulds are growing but, in small amounts, they do us no harm.

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Tag :mouldy bread

MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS

People often think that living things are either plants or animals. But there are many other kinds of life. Some are tiny creatures such as bacteria. Others, called fungi, can look like plants, but grow by absorbing food instead of by using sunlight. Fungi spread by scattering spores, dust-like particles much simpler than seeds.

Forest fungi
Forest are good places to find fungi, because many fungi feed on wood or on fallen leaves. Some, like the red-and-white fly agaric, are useful to trees because they help them to collect nutrients from the soil. Others, like the honey fungus, are much less welcome because they attack living wood.

Tag :fungi

Deadly bite
Malaria is caused by single-celled parasites that are carried by mosquito. When an infected mosquito bites a person, some of the parasites get into the blood, feed inside red blood cells and attack the liver.

Rotifers
Rotifers are related to roundworms (nematodes), even though they look nothing like worms. There are 2000 different species, mostly living in ponds or on wet mosses in woodlands.

Heliozoans
Heliozoans have spiky skeletons. They live mainly in ponds and lakes. The spikes are made of silica, the same substance that makes glass.

Daphnia
Daphnia are related to crabs and shrimps. They can just be seen with the naked eye, but you need a microscope to see their structure. They are transparent, so you can watch their stomach digesting food and all the other internal organs. They swim by beating their brush-like antennae.

The nature of microscopic

Paramecium
This single-called creature is called a ciliate because it is covered with tiny hairs known as cilia, which push it through the water.

Euglena
Euglena moves around by beating a hair-like growth called a flagellum. It lives like a plant, by harnessing energy from sunshine.

Vorticella
Each vorticella consists of a single cell with a cup on a long stalk. Tiny breathing hairs (cilia) drive food particles into the centre of the 'cup', where they are absorbed.

Invisible occupant
This dust mite, a tiny relative of spiders, is magnified around 375 times. It collects food with microscopic picers, and usually feeds at night.

Cyclops
Cyclops are microscopic relatives of crabs and shrimps. They get their name from the fact that they have only one eye, like the Cyclops of Greek legend. The two little bags attached to either side of this animal's tail contain eggs.

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