Discussion

Computer Science > Emerging Technologies

contingencies: I was looking at the fungi in my garden recently and realised there's such a variety of forms, there's no obvious reasons for many of them to exist. Are the fuzzy ones fuzzy because it creates vortices in the air affecting spore distribution? Or is it simply to avoid being eaten by certain types of critters? Are the tiny ones tiny because they are resource-starved, because their strategy is to avoid greater dehumidifying airflow and direct sun exposure above the grass-protected layer, or because they somehow produce greater viability spore distribution and don't need the volume of surface area to do so? Or are they planning to be eaten and have spore travel through digestive tract of slugs? The same question could be asked of huge ones, which are often found with chunks bitten out of them. Then there's some sort of weird fluffy one that occurs on moist ledges where you'd normally only expect bryophytes. Then you've got the slime molds which are sort of proto-fungi that just spam spore everywhere when it rains. All this makes me want to study them or possibly model some of the forms or strategies with biomimicry to better understand them. The main thing I take from all this is: if you have a large plurality of disparate fungi in your garden, it's healthy, because it's a bioindicator of multiple successful strategies in the local micro ecosystem.