Posted by Who says scientists can’t write? Moselio Schaechter finds a lovely passage about a lowly fungus from 1884.
The Loom
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and, like just about every story in biology, there’s a parasite story there too. Since Pilobolus goes a progress through the guts of a cow and exits in a pile of dung and cows don’t graze around such piles it has developed a kind of hydrolic rocket mechanism to launch itself from dung to grass. If that wasn’t neat enough the larvae of a lungworm (can’t remember which species) that also faces the problem of getting from dung to grass to cow actually invades the Pilobus fungi and gets a free ride.
August 7, 2007
August 7, 2007