Herbivore dung - Have a dung day!

[Chris Yeates]

hi JP

if they look like these:


with the tip of the neck looking like:



then you are spot on! it is a very strange (and rather lovely -to my warped mind) fungus . . .

cheers

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

Certainly looks like the beasties, nice micrograph, i see from top image you
have the same problem of Pilobolus.sp spore capsules scattered over other
fungi.

Nothing interesting to reaport,


X20

Probably developing A.furfuraceus going by the scurfy outer surface.



This Coprinus.sp is growing directly of a hand towel, gess the nutrients and hence mycelia soak
through the material, what is noticable is the develpment rate at lower temperatures is markedly
slower, (the samples are in an unheated room), i may move this one to a warmer area and leave the
lid of to see what happens.


Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

hi

Re the Coprinus . . . the classic Coprinus of mouldy textiles is Coprinopsis kimurae, but the veil on that is rather different, see:

Coprinus kimurae ((NL: Rondsporige halminktzwam, 026.39.0))

as you can see that species has rather distinctive globose spores; whatever it is this is a very interesting find and I would recommend keeping a careful eye on it and drying and keeping as much material as possible: there are only 2 records of kimurae on BMSFRD

http://194.203.77.76/fieldmycology/F...intGBNum=46537

who needs to go outside to find exciting fungi eh?

cheers

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

well, something else interesting i didn't know about, i just assumed the
Coprinus had come from the dung in the box and had for some reason
decided to fruit on the paper towel, i do get quite a few discos doing this
(or are they different to those on the dung (woops should scope more)).

I will try a small piece of gill from this one under the scope tommorow.

Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

ah!

so is this towel linked to a dung culture? . . . because that might well alter the situation somewhat . . .

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

Despite the weather found these on bunny currants today.




X20


X1000, in cotton blue.

The asci are clavate, the paraphyses showed little swelling, but no ripe spores, sample in moist
chamber to see if they mature but after the frost they may just rot!


Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

I doubt they'll rot . . . I wouldn't be surprised if as these spores mature they start to go purple . . . .

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

I don't know how the frost would affect these, though i am aware some
Peziza.sp can withstand frost, its all learning.

My cercophora.sp seem determined to not ripen, so have to settle for trying
to get better images of development.


X1000, in congo red.

There are plenty of cells within the asci but not an even part mature spore
to be found.

Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

hi J.P.

please excuse me if this is really obvious, but I would always mount dung fungi in water first; this can - if the asci and ascospores are mature - induce the spores to burst out; that means they are mature and measurements can be relied upon

Having made notes on the fungus in water, I then let the slide start to dry out and feed in a stain from one side of the coverslip and look again for other features . . . ornamentation, iodine reaction etc.

mounting the fungal material in a stain to start with effectively 'kills' it and spores which might have come out, won't . . .

studying the dung fungi allows so much room for 'experiment'; clearly for us amateurs that is rather limited and non-scientific, though interesting nonetheless; I keep meaning to try different techniques, e.g.:

collect fresh material; dry half of it and incubate the other half fresh; revive the dried dung at different ages (for example some after a year) observe if different species appear (this gives an idea of how viable the spores of different species can be)

again split a collection; incubate part with an excess of water, another part kept just moist - any differences?

the possibilities are virtually endless; I am particularly intrigued by the way that certain fungus species will 'take over' a Rabbit pellet, and clearly kill (or supress the growth of) other coprophilous fungi; certain 'Coprinus' species clearly do this; the 'hyphomycete' Stilbella erythrocephala is another of these 'autocratic' dung fungi

basically there's no excuse for saying there's nothing to look at over the winter months

cheers

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

Hi chris,
All sugestions and comments welcome, i seem to be stuck at the moment
trying to stain and image spore appendages better quality, so have been
balancing slide over the samples to capture ripe spores but the
Cercophora.sp just ain't playing ball

I have been trying (using a pair of darning needles) to split the perithica and
get the contents onto a slide and remove all other material then leave in a
drop of stain to soak, this has produced some succes with other species.

In nature dung gets soaked and baked by the sun so i don't worry about
some samples drying out for a couple of months, then put outside for a rain
shower.

Hopefully if i keep trying then next year i can put out some better results,
there seem to be a lot of species in the books and i have found a few so
maybe i will have to collect substrate from different environments to find
new species.

Today's oddity a perithecia with two ostioles.


X40.

Cheers J.P.

[CapAndBracket]

The fungi collected on a frozen bunny currant a few days ago have survived


X20

Now showing a surface speckled with dark tips of protruding asci,
looking like Ascobolus furfuraceus.
(note there are also a couple of Pilobolus.sp in the image).

Also the Cercophora.sp have ejected a couple of spores.


X1000


X1000

By letting these soak in weak congo red before applying a cover slip, i seem to have just about
caught the spore appendages in these images. (still room for improvement).


Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by Chris Yeates

I doubt they'll rot . . . I wouldn't be surprised if as these spores mature they start to go purple . . . .

Chris

Ta-dah!!!

[CapAndBracket]

Full marks chris, i even saw some Coprobia granulata in the field today,
so some of these species are pretty hardy.

Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

an unusual one . . . but this was definitely growing on a dung / woodchip mix heap (fruitbodies growing on both - clearly after the cellulose from whatever source)

Scutellinia subhirtella:

fruitbodies,



asci


and ascospores


Chris

[CapAndBracket]

Excellent micrgraphs again chris

Today i managed to extract this rather hyaline fruit body.


X100, in water.

This may illustrate somewhat the structure and function of the fruitbody,
notice the asci are developing at the bottom and then as the spores ripen
the asci move up towards the neck opening (ostiole, upper right) for
ejection into the environment, note also the fruitbody looks to have some
fine hairs/bristles (setae) on it.


X1000

Close up of the ostiole, note to its left a couple of the setae looking claw like.

Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

Schizothecium sp. ?

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

That's what i made it (the spore image was awful). Annoying after a couple
of reasonable ones, i hope these are of some interest to folks (it's a good
way for me to learn), and maybe my amateur bumblings will encourage others
to have a go.
One problem is my x40 objective is permanently cloudy and
proper scope cleaning tissues make no difference, maybe its moisture due to
low temp (either way i may need new lense in the spring if it don't clear).


X20

These are growing on deer pellets and look larger more disc like than recent
A.albidus, so just maybe a new species

Cheers J.P.

[Chris Yeates]

hi

definitely not A. albidus which is usually as tall - if not taller - than wide and would be showing dark ascus tips by now I would think . . .

best

Chris

[CapAndBracket]

At the moment i'm thinking they will be Coprotus lacteus, time will tell

Been messing with gentian violet again to hightlight spore appendages.


X1000, Cercophora coprophila spore.


X1000, Podospora globosa spores.

Cheers J.P.

[Gerel]

I suppose this might just belong here, assuming it actually is a fungus. I spotted a number of these wee jobs growing on insect frass under the bark of a rotten log. Approximately 1mm tall getting even this shot was stretching my macro capability to the edge.



Any thoughts


Steve

[CapAndBracket]

I must comend your photography and expansion of this threads substrate.
This certaily looks like a Slime Mould, i must say microscopy needed, but it
looks a good fit with Hemitrichia calyculata, nice find.

Cheers J.P.

[Gerel]

Originally Posted by CapAndBracket

I must comend your photography and expansion of this threads substrate.
This certaily looks like a Slime Mould, i must say microscopy needed, but it
looks a good fit with Hemitrichia calyculata, nice find.

Cheers J.P.

Thanks J.P. I suspected it would be a case for microscopy, but thought it was quite interesting even without an ID.

Cheers

Steve

[NickCantle]

It's a bloody fantastic image Steve!