Study
More g’s than the Space Shuttle: ballistospore discharge
Money, Nicholas P.
Mycologia, 1998
A review of the surface-tension catapult by which basidiomycete fungi launch spores: the condensation of Buller’s drop at the spore base, its sudden coalescence with the spore surface, and the momentum transfer that follows.
- Studied in
- Basidiomycota
- Sample size
- review of ballistospore discharge mechanics
A droplet of water condenses at the spore’s attachment point, and when it merges with a film on the spore surface the shift in centre of mass launches the spore clear of the gill. Accelerations exceed 10,000 g, and the whole event takes microseconds. The spore travels only a fraction of a millimetre — just far enough to clear the gill surface and reach still air, from which it falls and is carried away.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Ballistospory is a surface-tension mechanism rather than a muscular or pressure-driven one, and its energy budget is set by the size of the condensed droplet.
How NatureHQ reads it
The acceleration figure is the part that circulates and the distance is the part that matters. The spore is not being thrown anywhere — it is being flicked about a tenth of a millimetre, off the gill and into the gap between gills, where it drops out of the mushroom and the wind takes over. It is a device for getting past a boundary layer, not a cannon.
- Mechanics measured in a small number of species and inferred more widely.
- High-speed observation of an event this fast and this small is technically difficult and estimates have been revised.
- Applies to basidiomycetes; ascomycetes discharge spores by an entirely different pressure mechanism.
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Published by: Wiley journalsPublished in a Wiley journal.
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