
Fungal Lightning - zdw
http://www.bldgblog.com/2020/05/fungal-lightning/
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Herodotus38
For those who want to read the primary sources, this blog post is based off of
this: [https://physicsworld.com/a/artificial-lightning-strikes-
enco...](https://physicsworld.com/a/artificial-lightning-strikes-encourage-
growth-of-shiitake-mushrooms/)

And that article is based on this research paper:
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ab7627](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ab7627)

In short, the expanded air and vibrations from lightning are hyhpothesized to
cause disruptions in the hyphae of the shitake fungi, leading them to change
into a reproductive phase and increase yield. In mushroom farming, this is
typically done by "skillfully beating" the logs that the fungi are growing in
as per the first article above.

What I want to know is, where is the evidence that atmospheric electricity
increases the size of rats that is reported in the articles.

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klipt
I wonder if there's some evolutionary explanation like lightning being a good
predictor of rain that mushrooms need to grow?

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ludamad
If so it'd imply that this could hurt growth if misapplied (otherwise why
would something hold back its growth), which would be interesting to see. I'm
not clear how much literature there is on the effect

~~~
klipt
Maybe farmed mushrooms have all the water they need, but in the wild they have
to time their growth for when water is available?

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jquast
Why is Nitrogen fixation not mentioned?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation)

Anyone who worked at a farm or golf course or landscaping knows this
elementary fact of science, having a hard time understanding what
qualifications Geoff Manaugh has to write about science.

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aetherspawn
It's humbling when we have no idea how mushrooms work.

