MicrobeWorld

This is the second annual Week of the Fungi on www.smallthingsconsidered.us. Elio Schaechter and Merry Youle plan to "hail the start of the fall mushroom collecting season" by highlighting interesting stories, observations and musings about the various facets of Mycology.

The first post for the week is called "Myco-kleptomaniacs" and is about how small bark beetles in the forests of Papua New Guinea "sponge off the larger species rather than collecting and hauling their own spores." This particular beetle uses fungi to provide itself "not only with nutrients but also with the steroids needed to make the hormones that regulate the beetle's metamorphosis, a most unusual relationship between nutrition and development."