FBI Part 1: Fungus
/Thank you to everyone who has been reading our posts and taking the quizzes so far! Shout out to Claira S. and Audrey S. for correctly answering our bonus question from the Banana Slug post. From Claira: “Animals that eat dead plants and turn it into soil are called decomposers!”
The next three lessons will be about some decomposers. The term “Decomposer” can be applied to much more than just animals. Any living organism that breaks down waste from another organism and turns it into nutrients in the soil is a decomposer. In other words, decomposers are nature’s best recyclers!
The top decomposers in the forest are the FBI. No, I’m not talking about the government organization. In this case, FBI stands for: Fungus, Bacteria, and Invertebrates. These organisms help keep our forest and other ecosystems healthy by returning nutrients back into the ground. Today we will be learning about fungus!
Photo from Study.com Decomposers Lesson for Kids
The fungus you may be most familiar with is a mushroom. Maybe you have seen them on a hike in the forest or maybe you ate some for dinner last night, however, the mushroom is only a small part of what a fungus is. Yeast, often used in bread making, is another example of a fungus. If you don’t eat your bread fast enough, you may find it growing another type of fungus: mold. Fungi are different from plants because they cannot photosynthesize, or make their own food using energy from sunlight. Instead, they must get their nutrients from other organic sources, such as plants and animals. When they do this, some fungi leave behind nutrients for plants to use. This makes them decomposers
Not all fungi are decomposers. Some get nutrients from living organisms and others form a partnership with algae (This is called: lichen. We will explore that in another post!)
For fungi that produce mushrooms, most of the fungus is actually underground or within the log that it is decomposing. This part is called the Mycelium and is what does the decomposing. Next time you turn over a log, look for the white, stringy mycelium. The mushroom is more like the “fruit” of the fungus, helping it reproduce. Mushrooms release spores, like the “seeds” of the fungus, that may settle in another part of the forest where a new mycelium might start to grow.
Try at home: You can make a mushroom spore print! https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/mushroom-prints/
If you do, send a picture of your print to education@soundviewcamp.com and we may feature it in a future post!
