fun facts – Paragon

Fun Fact: Mushroom Houses

October 6, 2022

Fun Fact: Mushroom houses are coming and they know if you’re feeling cold.

An international team of researchers and industry partners from the UK, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands are working on a new type of smart building grown from mycelium (the root-like structures of fungi) that is capable of adaptively reacting to changes in light, temperature, and air pollutants. The Fungal Architectures (FUNGAR) Project brings together architecture, computer science, mycology, and industry experts to integrate living fungi into a structurally and environmentally performing building fabric.

FUNGAR started when Professor Adamatzky, Director of the Centre of Unconventional Computing at UWE Bristol, discovered that fungi respond to external stimuli such as changes in lighting and temperature with spikes of electrical activity. The objective is to build a building that will be able to recognise lighting levels, chemicals in the environment, the presence of people, and touch. Acting as a massively-parallel computer, the building will control connected devices like lights and heaters depending on the environmental conditions. By using mycelia as both an integrated structural and computational substrate, the building will have low production and running costs and embedded artificial intelligence. It will also be made from natural materials, lightweight, waterproof and recyclable when it reaches the end of its life.

Mycelium-based building products have been on the market for a while already, but existing approaches involve growing the fungi to the required shape (e.g., bricks, blocks, or sheets), and then drying them to produce a stable, inert, but no-longer-living composite. The living building material for the FUNGAR Project will act as its own parallel computer for environmental regulation and adaptation.

I hope they build their building… There’s so mushroom for development in this emerging field. I’m sure there are lots of people willing to champignon their work…and they shouldn’t have any truffle publishing…

If you’re interested in reading more about FUNGAR, you can find their website here: https://www.fungar.eu/

Fun Fact: Plants as weapons

July 28, 2022

Fun Fact: The seeds of the velvet bean plant cause such intense itching that they were weaponized by the British during WW2.

Hairs lining the seed pods of Mucuna pruriens, or velvet bean, contain serotonin and mucunain, which cases sever itching when touched. Scratching the affected area spreads the hairs and the itching, causing victims to scratch uncontrollably.

In an effort to demoralize the Third Reich during WW2, the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) smuggled itching powder made from M. pruriens to resistance groups working as laundresses and clothiers. The powder was applied to clothing, bedding, and toilet paper, but was particularly effective when applied to clothing touching “the more tender parts of the human anatomy”. The powder was so irritating that a U-Boat had to return to port for medical treatment because crew uniforms had been contaminated with it, causing an outbreak severe dermatitis.

Fun Fact: About ripe fruits

July 21, 2022

Fun Fact: You owe the dexterity of your hands to the fact that some figs don’t change colour when they ripen.

Maybe…at least a bit. Twenty percent of figs show no color change during ripening, which poses a sensory challenge if you’re a hominid trying to find nutritious food to eat. Imagine how much longer it would take to choose an avocado at the grocery store if you couldn’t squeeze it. You would have to bite each one to know if it was edible. Store managers wouldn’t like that.

Hominids, like chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans, have uniquely dextrous hands compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. In a study lead by Dartmouth College evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominy, researchers found that chimpanzees’ ability to feel the ripeness of a fig conferred an advantage over rival species when selecting fruit. Monkeys (black-and-white colobus monkeys, red colobus monkeys, and red-tailed monkeys) that compete for the same food relied on colour and bite-testing. Squeezing figs supplied nearly 75 % more information about fig ripeness than colour did and it was also four times faster than plucking it, biting it, and spitting it out if it wasn’t ripe. This lead to more efficient foraging and ultimately more calories consumed by the chimps.

While the researchers couldn’t definitively say that the ability to feel if a fruit is ripe was a selective force in the evolution of more sophisticated hands, the idea is very a-peeling.

If you’re interested in further reading, you can find their paper here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0001

Fun Fact: Leaves with Drip Tips

June 29, 2022

Fun Fact: The proportion of leaves with drip tips in the fossil record can tell you how rainy the climate was.

Drip tips are specialised pointed tips on the ends of leaves of some plants. As their name implies, drip tips help channel water off the leaves quickly. In particularly rainy places, accumulated water can break leaves and provides a perfect place for the growth of algae, mildew, or other nasty microorganisms that thrive in the hot and humid conditions. They are common in rainforests and are more pronounced in shaded understory plants than overstory canopy plants that are exposed to sun and wind. If you measure the proportion of leaves that have drip tips, you can make a pretty reasonable guess of the local rainfall.

Apparently, my living room is very rainy…

If you want to see some drip tips in action (and an excited biologist), follow this link:

Fun Fact: About Artificial Banana Flavouring

June 23, 2022

Fun Fact: Artificial banana flavouring tastes more like an (almost) extinct variety of banana than the one in your fridge.

There is a theory floating around that the reason artificial banana flavour tastes so wrong is because it was developed from an old variety of banana that is no longer commercially available: the Gros Michel. The Gros Michel, or “Big Mike”, was once the top banana at grocery stores but it was mostly wiped out in the 1950s by a fungus called Fusarium oxysporum.

People who still grow the Gros Michel say that it tastes similar to cultivated bananas now (the Cavendish), but amplified – sweeter, and somehow artificial. While it might be a neat story, it is unlikely that artificial banana flavouring comes from the Gros Michel. Synthetic organic chemist, Derek Lowe explains that the banana flavour comes from a simple compound called isoamyl acetate, or the “banana ester”, which is found naturally in bananas including the Gros Michel and the Cavendish. It’s far more likely that the Gros Michel tastes artificial because, aside from isoamyl acetate, it has far fewer compounds than other banana varieties. Strong, one-note tastes tend to be perceived as more “artificial’; capturing the flavour of something like a fresh, ripe fruit in one compound is impossible. The Cavendish may be mild in comparison, but it is more complex.

Long story short, at one time, banana flavouring actually tasted like the real thing. That’s bananas!

Fun Fact: Acacia trees and rewards

June 16, 2022

Fun Fact: Acacia trees will change the rewards they provide to their symbiotic ants depending on how good they are at their jobs.

Swollen-thorn acacias, most famously Vachellia collensii, are known for their symbiotic relationship with ants. They provide a bunch of services for their trees, including attacking herbivorous insects, clearing encroaching vegetation, and even protecting them from disease by distributing antibiotics synthesized by bacteria living on their legs. In return, the trees reward their ants with food in the form of protein-rich Beltian bodies and sugar-rich nectaries, and with secure housing inside hollow thorns that have evolved specifically for the purpose. Sweet deal.

One of the best-known ant symbionts is Pseudomyrmex spinicola. They do everything expected of them and help their host plant to thrive. The kind of neighbour you’d lend a cup of sugar to (literally). Crematogaster crinosa however, is a little less desirable. They are lazy defenders against herbivores, fail to clear encroaching veg, and are not known to spread antibiotics. A bunch of formic freeloaders. Considering the difference in services, you’d think the acacia would pay their little buddies differently. And you’d be right… although probably not in the way you would think.

In a three-month study, Amador-Vargas and Gijsman (2021) monitored acacia trees at two sites, one which supported both ant species, and one with only P. spinicola. The authors found that the quality and quantity of accommodation (thorns) remained the same between the two sites, but the food rewards did not. Acacias with colonies of only P. spinicola produced nectaries along the bases of their leaves, while those also supporting C. crinosa sported them at their leaf tips too. Rude. The authors suggested that the extra nectaries encouraged the lay-about-Larry’s to traverse the leaves to reach an extra reward, leading them to drive away pests they might not have encountered otherwise. Hardly seems fair to the poor P. spinicola who did not need to be bribed to achieve the same goal.

If you’re interested in further reading, see their paper: Gijsman, F., González, Y., Guevara, M. et al. Short-term plasticity and variation in acacia ant-rewards under different conditions of ant occupancy and herbivory. Sci Nat 108, 31 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-021-01738-w

Fun Fact: Banyan Trees

June 8, 2022

Fun Fact: Banyan trees (Ficus benghalensis) can walk…

So you’d better tie up your ficus before it runs off to join an Entmoot. (I hope I’m not the only one chuckling at that joke, it’s a pretty good one).

Banyan trees, or strangler figs, start off life as epiphytes when their seeds land on the branches of another tree. Once the seed germinates, it sends aerial roots down around the trunk of its host tree, which eventually dies and rots away, leaving the hollow trunk of the banyan. As they grow, banyan trees continue to send aerial ‘prop roots’ down from their branches to support their massive structure. Eventually, the original trunk will die and one of the prop roots will become the new main trunk. This cycle can continue on for centuries with old trunks dying away and new prop roots carrying on, which is a sort of walking… I suppose.

One of the biggest known banyan trees is the Great Banyan near Kolkata, India. It covers more than 4.6 acres and can shelter over 20,000 people.

Fun Fact: Sailor’s Eyeballs

May 26, 2022

Fun Fact: The largest single-celled organism is an alga called Sailor’s Eyeballs.

Valonia ventricosa is found in tropical and subtropical ocean regions around the globe, and is one of the largest, if not the largest, single celled organisms. It is coenocytic, with several cytoplasmic domains, each with its on nucleus and set of chloroplasts, connected by cytoplasmic “bridges” of microtubules. Thanks to this structure, the single cell can grow up to 9 cm in diameter. Pretty impressive considering you need about 5 million cells to make a fly.

Because V. ventricose is such a large cell, it has been used by scientists to study the transfer of water and other fluids across biological membranes. These studies help us understand more about cellulose, the main component of the cell walls of algae and plants. It also has an unusually high electrical potential relative to the seawater around it, although no one is sure why.

And just in case you were wondering (because I know you are): yes, you can eat it, and no, it does not taste good.

Fun Fact: on Mountain gorillas

May 19, 2022

Fun Fact: Mountain gorillas live a near-constant state of flatulence because of their diet.

Eating 20 kg a day of salad could do that to anyone. A 2020 BBC documentary using animatronic cameras recorded a family of gorillas munching on leaves, twigs, and fruit. In addition to the intestinal orchestra, they also captured the gorillas singing for their supper. In an associated study published in PLOS ONE, older male gorillas were reported to be the most likely to sing and everyone was more likely to sing for salad (aquatic vegetation, flowers, and seeds) than for bugs.

You and me both.

If you’re interested in further reading, see their 2016 paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144197

For a video of the “chorus”, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ta7Uwd2koA

Fun Fact: Foxfire

April 7, 2022

Fun Fact: The controls of the first combat submarine were illuminated by mushrooms.

The submersible, named “Turtle” was invented by Yale College undergrad David Bushnell in 1775 and has a documented record of use in combat during the American Revolutionary War. The design allowed the operator to affix an explosive charge to the hull of a ship and tootle away (at a max speed of 3 mph) before the charge exploded. It was also the first submersible to use water as ballast, the first to be equipped with a breathing device, and the first to demonstrate that gunpowder could be exploded underwater. It also used foxfire from bioluminescent fungi to illuminate the needles on its internal instruments so that they could be read in the dark.

Foxfire (derived from the French ‘faux’ for false) is the bioluminescence created by some species of fungi. It occurs in a number of species including Panellus stipticus (below), Omphalotus olearius, and O. nidiformis. The blueish-greenish glow is attributed to luciferin, which emits light after oxidation catalyzed by the enzyme luciferase. The earliest record of foxfire is from 382 BC, by Aristotle. He described a light that, unlike fire, was cold to the touch. Depending on the species, the light emitted can be bright enough to read by. Some scholars attribute foxfire to the will-o’-the-whisp phenomenon described in English folklore, but under different names, is also part of the folklore of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, the US, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Bangladesh, India, Japan, China, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Australia, and probably more… pretty much everyone.

Despite its glowing dials, Turtle was never successful in battle. The Americans thought that it reflected both their ingenuity after the fall of New York and their tendency to adopt and embrace new, sometimes radical technologies. The British made no record of it.

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