What a Course on the Biology of Fungi Has Taught Me

There is one simple truth that I will always remember about fungi as a result of having taken a course on the biology of fungi: fungi are literally everywhere and do everything. Unfortunately, we, as a society, aren't so keen on fungi for whatever reason and so we often forget that fungi even exist. Our dispositions toward this entire kingdom of life fluctuate wildly from indifference to revulsion with the mood of the moment usually depending on how recently we have come in contact with a particularly "disgusting" mold or mildew. As many mycological advocates explain, we, as a society have a deep seated “fungiphobia” that prevents us from truly understanding the incredibly diverse and beautiful Kingdom Fungi. The fact that fungi have their very own kingdom that includes such disparate life-forms such as endomycorrhizal glomeromyctes and beetle-obligate ascomycetes is something that is lost on most people—myself included until I took this course. To put it in more familiar terms, the Kingdom Animalia includes organisms from sponges to elephants. The genetic and evolutionary distance between these two types of organisms is enormous, and it is possible to see the same kind of diversity and depth within the Kingdom Fungi to an even greater extent. The sheer diversity of even such fundamental aspects of biology such as life-cycles and mating systems in Kingdom Fungi is without rival—fungi do things with sexual reproduction that even the most jaded Japanese porn fetishist has never dreamt of. This incredible diversity is a driving force behind fungi's phenomenal ability to colonize literally any part of the planet. I will remember all of these things, and more, as my hair turns grey and my ever weakening immune system slowly gives way to a fungal infection that rapidly spreads throughout my body before establishing itself in my brain. As I slowly descend into madness and eventual death, I will remember that I lived in a world run by fungi. It was their ubiquity that allowed for me to breathe in the fatal spore—after all, there were millions of spores in the air that day—on that typical day when I was close to 50. And so then at the end of it all, I would close my eyes and realize my true purpose in life: food for the almighty fungi.