Beneath the quiet shade of towering trees, a secret world pulses with life, invisible to the casual hiker and even seasoned ...

This fungus is one of many “brown rot” fungi, because it digests the sugary cellulose in wood but not its lignin. Lignin is brown, so the weakened wood still has that color.

In the laboratory, they isolated the fungi from the wood and identified 21 species. Each of the fungi was incubated with sheets of low-density polyethylene between 28 and 30°C.

To better understand how claims about the “wood wide web” were spread, the authors examined how 18 “influential” studies were cited by other researchers.

These fungi need carbon to survive. While wood is their preferred carbon source, when it was not available, polyethylene provided an alternative. Their degradation of more plastic, ...

But when their preferred meal isn't available, these wood-decaying fungi can chow down on plastic instead, according to a new study published July 26 in the journal PLOS One.

They then placed the wood blocks, which were colonized with fungus, in plates of damp soil that each had nine blocks arranged in either a circle or an X. They were then allowed to incubate for 116 ...

But as the wood-wide web has gained fame, it has also inspired a backlash among scientists. In a recent review of published research, Dr. Karst, Dr. Hoeksema and Melanie Jones, a biologist at the ...

The 'immortal' Dead man's fingers fungus won't eat your brain, just dead wood. By Laura Baisas. Published Sep 20, 2024 10:17 AM EDT.