How Fungi Obtain Their Energy

All life here on planet earth gets it’s energy from chemical processes that break down complex carbohydrates or nutrients to form new ones, and one of the most interesting groups are fungi, simply because they’re so unlike everything that we’re familiar with. 

Plants are autotrophs, meaning they are able to make their own food using light from the sun to create a chemical reaction to produce their sugars. Us humans, like all animals on this planet, are heterotrophs, meaning that we get our food from a source outside of ourselves, which we eat and are broken down by acids in our stomachs.  Fungi are also heterotrophs, but instead of ingesting something to break it down, they extrude their digestive parts and use different chemicals to break things down and eat them.  In other words, we eat and digest things in our stomachs, whereas fungi sort of throw their stomachs around onto food to eat it - kind of gnarly, huh? 

Now, fungi are grouped based on where they get their energy, and many are saprotrophic (or saprobic) fungi which eat and decay dead things like fallen logs.  This includes brown-rot fungi which produce forms of hydrogen peroxide that break down cellulose to leave the brown lignin in the wood, and white-rot fungi which produce different enzymes to break down the lignin and leave the white cellulose of wood.  Then there are mutualistic fungi such as mycorrhizal fungi which obtain their nutrients through connecting to the roots of different plant and trees to facilitate the flow of nutrients between them, and lichen, which are different species of fungi that have formed partnerships with one or more species of bacteria that they house within themselves, giving them protection in return for the energy they create.  Then there are parasitic fungi which feed on their living hosts, from ants to elm trees! 

So as life evolved to find very unique and different ways to get energy to survive on this planet, fungi may just be the most creative, inventive, and maybe a bit bizarre, but still beautiful.

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Produced & Directed by Ross Reid

~ I'd like to acknowledge that this video was filmed on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. ~

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