Mushroom Mystery

[Sydney007]

Mushroom Mystery

Last year, there were no mushrooms or toadstools.
As they've always grown around the yard and in the
woods, this became a mystery.

While picking-up some debris, I discovered mushrooms
growing underneath some leaves. After looking under
other piles of leaves, I discovered more.

Why aren't the mushrooms growing in or around sunlight?

Can the change in spore activity explain why giant
mushrooms grow underground?

Formidable Fungus is World's Largest Organism:

Mega mushroom expands in Oregon forest
by David Johnson
This article was posted on December 7, 2000.

What is probably the largest living organism on earth has been discovered in the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon. A fungus living three feet underground is estimated to cover 2,200 acres. After testing samples from various locations, scientists say it is all one organism.

Officially known as Armillaria ostoyae, or the honey mushroom, the fungus is 3.5 miles across and takes up 1,665 football fields. The small mushrooms visible above ground are only the tip of the iceberg.

Experts estimate that the giant mushroom is at least 2,400 years old, but could be 7,200 years old.

Previously, the world's largest organism was another Armillaria ostoyae, which covers a mere 1,500 acres near Mt. Adams in Washington state.

Scientists became interested in that section of forest when trees began to die. The honey mushroom uses tentacles, called rhizomorphs, to take water and nutrients from roots, killing trees.

The process benefits the ecosystem by creating clearings where new plants grow. Animals, such as woodpeckers, live in the dead tree trunks. Mushrooms also recycle nutrients

The dry climate of eastern Oregon discourages competition from new growth, leaving space for mushrooms already established.

Genetically Closer to People


In other research, scientists have determined that fungi are more closely related to human beings and animals than to other plants.
Moreover, while humans and most species are divided into only two sexes, mushrooms contain over 36,000 sexes.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/fungus1.html

[Sydney007]

Study: Earth 'likely' hottest in 2,000 years

Panel: 'Warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since Earth has run such a fever.

The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy's panel.

The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New York, to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat.

Last year, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of three climate scientists, Boehlert said Barton should try to learn from scientists, not intimidate them.

Boehlert said Thursday the report shows the value of having scientists advise Congress.

"There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change," he said.

Other new research Thursday showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities. Their study is being published by the American Geophysical Union.

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs. (Watch as lawmakers argue saving the planet could ruin our economy-- 2:24)

Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had concluded the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years. Their research was known as the "hockey-stick" graphic because it compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

The National Academy scientists concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research from the late 1990s was "likely" to be true, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the '90s research "are very close to being right" and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said.

The panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed Earth's temperatures going back thousands of years, before there was data from modern scientific instruments.

For all but the most recent 150 years, the academy scientists relied on "proxy" evidence from tree rings, corals, glaciers and ice cores, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments, boreholes and other sources. They also examined indirect records such as paintings of glaciers in the Alps.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the academy said.

Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years, though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

The scientists said they had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600. But they considered it reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, it said.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science....ap/index.html

If the earth was warm approximately 2,000 years ago(the age of the
mushroom) as it is today, are we causing global warming or is the sun,
the source of earth's warmth, closer to earth and similar to its' position
2,000 years ago?

[Sydney007]

27 Unknown Creatures Found in California Caves

By The Associated Press
18 January 2006

KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) _ Spiders, centipedes and scorpion-like critters are among the 27 new animal species that biologists have discovered in the dark, damp caves of two Central California national parks, officials announced Tuesday.

The finds were made during a three-year study of 30 caves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. Many of the creatures live only in caves—and some only in one particular cave of Sequoia and Kings Canyon, according to the study, conducted by park staff and biologists from Austin, Texas-based Zara Environmental.

"We thought we might find a handful of new species,'' said Joel Despain, cave specialist for the parks. "It was amazing to find 27.''

Park officials said the cave-dwelling invertebrates can tell scientists a lot about environmental problems or changes because of their sensitivity to surroundings.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have 238 known caves.

http://www.livescience.com/animalwor..._critters.html

What's the biology like in your areas?