The Urban Pantheist

There are some people who can have life-threatening allergic reactions to normally edible mushrooms, and such people might have a reaction to their spores, too. That would be a small fraction of the population, but such people do exist. Molds and mushrooms are different, but not as different as you might think! Mushrooms are analagous to the flowers in a flowering plant; the majority of the organism exists as a mass of mycelia within the substrate (http://www.microbe.org/news/giant_fungus.asp), and without some very specific testing, you'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart. A mushroom itself isn't an organism, but the reproductive structure of an organism.

The only danger to a carnivorous animal from a poisonous mushroom I could see would be if its prey (say a mouse) ate a poisonous mushroom, and then the predator ate the prey animal. The poisonous mushroom in the prey's gut could then kill the predator, too. I find it incredibly unlikely that a predator would mistake a mushroom for a mouse, though!

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Does whoever it was eat mushrooms? If so ... pfffffeh.

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That would be a small fraction of the population, but such people do exist.

Wouldn't those people have to stay inside?!? Plastic bubble and all that. Spores are EVERYWHERE. Literally.

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No more than people who allergic to mold spores have to stay inside or in a plastic bubble. Mold spores are everywhere, too... but in the open air, far from their source, they're generally in too low concentration for the major immune system reaction necessary for a noteable allergic attack. In fact, molds generally have wider distribution that mushrooms, because mushroom-producing fungi usually produce spores under more specific conditions and tend to be more seasonal in mushroom (and thus spore) production than molds.

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This was kind of what I was thinking of.

Plus, molds aren't basidiomycetes, right? So mushroom-producing fungi and molds are in different...Phyla? Divisions? As different, taxonomically speaking, as shrimp and chicken.

But I suppose what's important (to the allergy sufferer) is how similar the protein of the spores are to one another...

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I think some mold allergy sufferers would rather stay inside but they take claritin and go out and about in the world anyway. Mold allergy makes

urbpan sad when he stays at his dad's house.

I agree that spores from your average mushroom infestation would probably not be enough to hurt anyone except the severly immunosuppressed. Maybe they'd sneeze if they put their nose in an exploded puffball. That makes picking the mushrooms seem even dumber.

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lynsage.livejournal.com

um... is this person aware that by bothering the shrooms, they're making the spores fly around?

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"Mold" isn't a taxa, and not all molds are in a single taxa. There's more difference between shrimp (Phylum: Arthropoda, Sub-Phylum: Crustacea, Class: Malacostraca) and chickens (Phylum: Chordata, Sub-Phylum: Vertebrata, Class: Aves) than there is between mushrooms and molds; in fact, the division between the Basidiomycota (into which mushrooms fall) and Zygomycota (into which many, but not all molds fall; some also end up in Ascomycota) is a bit arbitrarym, and neither are truly monophyletic taxa. The difference between the two is largely based on clustering habits of their hyphae. The Linnaean taxonomic scheme works well for plants and animals, but unicellular organisms and fungi are still a bit up in the air as to proper classification, and a lot of the work on fungi in particular is now based more on DNA-level relationships than on macrocharacteristics.

Offhand, I couldn't say how different the proteins are, especially key proteins that might trigger and allergic reaction.

No doubt your coworkers were over-reacting, though. It's doubtful that an allergy-sufferer would be able to get close enough to the mushrooms in an exhibit for them to have any effect upon them, and even an allergy-sufferer who went into the cage would have to work pretty hard at getting a big enough dose of the spores to have a reaction!

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This is good stuff to know. Thanks for that.

You will undoubtedly be horrified to learn that I'm going to teach a workshop on mushrooms to our teacher/naturalist staff, in September. As long as I know more than they do going in, right?

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Hawks and owls? Not to my knowledge.

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Oh, I wouldn't dare go into the world of rational thought on this one.

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No the HUMAN you refer to in your post. The one you talked to about it?!

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I don't think either of these people would ever eat anything that they were aware grew outside. Yucky.

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Lol. Not just outside - on poop. Or dead things.

p.s. About 8/21. My dad will be getting into Logan at 4 so me'n Bec'll leave around 3 and meet him at the airport. Lil' bitch'll just be crated from 3-6 and that should be okay.

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Nah, I'm not horrified at all. This kind of technical stuff is far beyond what these folks need to know. If I might recommend a good source for material if you ahven't found it on your own, check out MushroomExpert.com (http://www.mushroomexpert.com) and have a poke around at Tom Volk's website (http://http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/), too.

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http://users.livejournal.com/_bazilisk_/

I am suprised to hear about this coming from a wildlife sanctuary.

AH! Run! Fungi!

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I HATE mushrooms. To eat, that is. They're pretty cool when they're outside, but no fungus for me, thanks. Never liked 'em, never will.

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I must be the only member of the Boston Mycological Club who has no interest in eating the damn things. I've taught myself to eat some kinds (the way I've taught myself to eat any vegetables--yes, I'm a vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables) but I'll only eat them for novelty value.

I feel kind of bad about this post. It's basically just a tirade I posted when I was in a bad mood. My coworkers have good motivations even if I don't agree with all their decisions.

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cometomorrow.livejournal.com

where is your wildlife sanctuary at?

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Massachusetts-- why do you ask?

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Well, at least you have that. Some of my coworkers are just plain useless.

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Because they taste worse than ass? It's like eating dirt. Bleh. Yuck. Ick!!

I will deal with wood ear in hot and sour soup and straw mushrooms in strongly flavored chinese food but that is it.

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They DO taste worse than ass. And the texture! Ew... I always pawn mine off on

editswlonghair if I find one lurking in my food.

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It's just all wrong. I don't know why people eat that crap.

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Seriously. Fungus eating freaks, all of them!!

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And every pizza except for the ones I order for myself have mushrooms on 'em. I swear to god.

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At least they don't ruin the flavor. I am not a fan of onions, and I once agreed to split a pizza with someone from work, and the onion on her half totally stank up my half! It is the only topping I refuse to go halfsies on.

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