Questions tagged [fungi]
For questions about spore-producing organisms that feed on organic matter. Remember that fungi are not plants.
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What would fungal technology look like? [closed]
In a setting I've created it's modern Earth just like you see around you every day except there's an area deep underground reminiscent of D&D's Underdark or Skyrim's Blackreach in that it's a ...
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Flora of Radiotroph-Dominated World
After the Great Nuclear Apocalypse, the skies clouded over with dust and the world froze. Expectedly, most plants died out, and were then replaced with radiotrophic fungi, originating from all sorts ...
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Can a human colony be self-sustaining without sunlight using mushrooms?
Fungi do not need light to grow. They also can and do grow in feces.
Is it possible for a human colony to provide their caloric needs by growing mushrooms using their own poop? If so, what's the ...
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Can a Moon Shoot Spores?
I'm currently working on a world for a fantasy novel. For the sake of this discussion, we can assume it's low to no magic at all, and has no higher-intelligence interference, such as creator races, ...
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How does my symbiotic fungus silicify its own cell walls to armor its host's bones?
Fungi have cell walls which - unlike those of plants, which are made out of cellulose, xylan, and lignin - are instead made out of chitin, glucan, and mannans.
A fungus I'm planning on writing about ...
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plausibility check : this kind of mushroom [closed]
context :
in this world with small gravity and strong wind, airbone plants thrive.
this planet too have thick clouds covering so underneath it is almost dark or rainy.
the thriveness of airbone ...
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Tunnelling Spores in Asteroid Belt
I am trying to justify a fungal life-form that lives in an alternate version of the Kuiper Belt.
The life-form is (loosely) based off of this article: https://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/fungus-...
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crystalline fungi: is it possible, or should I excuse it with mAgIc/
A species of fungi known as Golloriee is a fairly uncommon creature I've come up with. Its origins are certainly very unnatural, but have been shrouded in folklore over time, they say the crystals ...
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Giant realistic Prototaxites like fungi in a hot climate
My planet is very similar to earth around 359 to 299 million years ago. years ago. It’s mostly covered in deserts, jungles, swamps, temperate forests, and their variants.
(The Carboniferous period)
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Why would an everything-eating fungus be unable to spread outside of Australia?
Let's say that Australia has been taken over by a hyper-aggressive fungus that grows on any biological life form larger than an ant. The stuff covers the entire continent, has subsumed every form of ...
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Could a fungivore store fungus like a shrew or mole stores meat?
Could an animal extract fungi and store them alive, as shrews and moles do with their prey? Some problems could be that fungi have less energy than meat, and that they are easier to find due to being ...
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What can you do with fungal spores? [closed]
The spores in question come from the vegetables described in this question. More specifically, the spores are like grains, with a chitinous shell, small wings, and a nutritious flesh, akin to softer ...
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Does this vegetable make sense?
This vegetable is a fungus grown by the people described in this question. It is egg-shaped with no stalk, and is around 1m tall and 70cm across at the widest point. They can be, and often are, ...
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Could the Earth survive without animals and have only plants and fungi populate it? [duplicate]
My question is very specific. If the Earth had evolved to never have animals, and instead only have plants and fungi, could the Earth be habitable for humans, or any life at all? Could it be ...
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Feasibility of diet based on Fungi?
I envision a fictional future world where fungi become an effective means of recycling massive amounts of food waste (compost) with the help of genetically engineered variants. The genetically ...
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Effects of a theoretical parasitic superfungus on the ecosystem
I came up with an idea for a parasitic fungus for my world, and I was wondering if it would be biologically viable/possible. Here are its traits.
After the target organism breathes in the spores, they ...
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How would Filter Feeding Fungal Forests affect the ocean ecosystems
So, I'm asking this on behalf of a seeded world project. There are no corals, sponges, kelp, or anemones in this world's oceans (although there are seagrasses); instead, all those roles are taken up ...
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Would seasonal fungal forests be possible?
This question is inspired by a comment by PcMan
Imagine you have an Earth-like planet, except it is just a little farther away and has longer days. Instead of having a tropical equator, the planet now ...
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Planet where fungi exist but plants don’t [closed]
Could a planet, with life, exist without plants, but instead with fungi? How large could these fungi get? What would all of the conditions involved be?
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how can my exploding fungus/plant explode?
So, this is another part in a lot of my questions for something I'm making. Our protagonists are unfortunately stuck on an alien planet. They end up going into a cave, which is a bad idea because some ...
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Could tree-sized mushrooms grow on an Earth-like world?
OK so this world I'm building has Earth-like flora and fauna, along with being around the size of Earth and being around the same distance as Earth from a star the size of the sun. The atmosphere is ...
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Could my fungus exist naturally?
My fungus starts out as an extremely small spore, this small spore will bury and implant itself near the spinal cord and cerebellum, and will then secrete an enzyme that hijacks and later puts it in ...
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How could fungi evolve intelligence sufficient enough to develop a civilization
In Stellaris fungoids are, well, intelligent funguses; some Earth-like, two looking like intelligent species infected by funguses, and the rest looking alien.
Let’s get into the actually basics and ...
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How would a "zombie fungus" work on humans?
Short question:
which hormones should high contagious fungi spores produce to make their human host spread the joy and infection (by hugging and kisses) on early stages of infection, and become ...
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Biology of mushroom creatures
In many fantasy settings, a race of mushroom creatures are often encountered. They may or may not look humanoid but still have the biology of fungi.
My question is how. How can a mushroom be ...
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Would copper swords work better than regular swords against fungal monsters?
I know that copper has antifungal properties, but I'm not sure exactly how it works. So... How does it work exactly?
If you were fighting some fungus monsters, would using a copper sword give you any ...
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Symbiotic fungus causing rapid mutations within the human body
A group of scientists discover a heretofore unknown species of fungus. unbeknownst to them, let's say it is of extraterrestrial origin but it operates very much like certain fungi on Earth (e.g. ...
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Designing the properties of a biological agent that could wipe out 90% of the population without being stopped
I'm interested in coming up with a plausible agent of destruction, virus or fungus or engineered weapon or what have you, that could conceivably wipe out a majority of the human race. What physical ...
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Building a society of "fungus people" where humans have developed a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic/fungal organism [closed]
In this universe, humans discovered a previously unknown fungus. Similar to the cordyceps fungus, this particular organism uses its spores to enter the body of its host, and grows within it. It will ...
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Designing a symbiotic fungus that could cause a worldwide pandemic
Just for clarification: when I say "designing", I mean just coming up with the idea of this fungus, as opposed to it being "designed" by humans.
I've been very interested in fungi ever since finding ...
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What if animals evolved from fungi?
So in my book series, there is this planet called Axaca. However, it is very different from most of the galaxy in that its flora is almost completely fungal. Here are some things to know:
Trees are ...
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Feasibility of Giant Fungi
I have a temperate rainforest environment within the arctic circle of my planet. What is the feasibility of fungi storing nutrients from dead matter during the daylight hours, then erupting to create ...
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Preventing a Suggestibility Drug from taking over the Story?
I've been developing a species of fungus which creates a variety of drugs with hallucinogenic and increased suggestibility properties. The most useful strain of this particular fungi species can be ...
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How would Ophiocordyceps unilateralis need to be modified to make a realistic "The Last of Us" apocalypse scenario?
In the story I am writing, the United States never pulled out of Vietnam, with the conflict continuing into the present day. During this time, the United States decided to use Vietnam to secretly ...
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What do mushroom-corals use to build their skeletons?
The world is a steamy tropical ball reminiscient of Earth in the time of the dinosaurs. There is no permanent ice cover anywhere on Earth. An arctic continent, entirely within the polar circle, is ...
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How could mushroom/fungi forests be possible?
I am currently working on a setting which is fantasy but based around a soft approach to speculative biology.
It is a tidally locked world with the habitable region based around the terminator ...
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What animals live in mushroom forests?
A followup to this question.
In my world, mushroom producing fungi have developed a symbiotic relationship with algae (or cyanobacteria) similar to Prototaxites.
These fungi exist alongside all the ...
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A world where lichens take the niche of plants? [duplicate]
On this hypothetical world the niche that would be occupied by plants is instead occupied by fungi living in symbiosis with cyanobacteria and/or algae.
For example, the tissues of the tree analogues ...
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Where do mushroom forests thrive?
Lichen are a symbiotic organism that involves algae or cyanobacteria living inside a fungus. The algae produce energy through photosynthesis, while the fungus protect the algae from the environment ...
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