News Excerpt:
Scientists made a surprising discovery in the foothills of the Western Ghats in India, a mushroom growing out of the side of the frog.
More about the discovery:
- This is the first time that a mushroom has been observed growing out of a living being.
- Last year, the researchers discovered several ‘Rao’s Golden-backed frogs' in a rainwater-fed pond on the roadside in the foothills of the Kudremukh ranges at Mala, Karkala, in Karnataka.
- One of the frogs had a white-coloured growth coming out from the right side of its body.
- Later it turned out that it was a mushroom growing out of a living frog.
- But since the frog was not captured, it is unclear how exactly the mushroom was growing. It also cannot be determined how the growth of the mushroom is affecting the frog.
- The researchers raise concern about the discovery because there is already a fungus that threatens more than 700 species of amphibians across the world and is named as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
- It causes the disease chytridiomycosis, which can cause sporadic deaths in some populations while having a 100 per cent mortality rate in others.
- There are no known effective measures to control its propagation and protect different frog species.
What other experts are saying:
- The growth does look like a bonnet mushroom but it could also be something else that looks similar.
- Recently it was discovered that Mycena (bonnet mushroom) can grow not only on decaying wood but also on the living roots of trees.
- This means that the mushroom genus can switch from a symbiotic relationship to a parasite or a decomposer.
- There are many theories about how the mushroom began growing there, especially considering that the humid conditions of the Western Ghats would have provided a great environment to grow.
- Sydney Glassman, a fungal ecologist at the University of California Riverside has the opinion that she is not even convinced that the growth is even a mushroom. Researchers will need a lot more evidence, like spore and genetic samples, before they conclusively identify it as a bonnet mushroom or indeed, a mushroom of any kind.
