It's a mould breaker. Researchers have discovered the first fungus that behaves as a farmer. Pilar Junier of the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and colleagues studied the soil fungus Morchella crassipes and its relationship with Pseudomonas putida bacteria. To track the flow of nutrients, she labelled the fungus with carbon-13 in one experiment, and labelled the bacteria with the isotope in a second. After five days, the bacteria had gained nutrients from the fungus. But then the tables turned and the fungus started taking nutrients from the bacteria (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/ rspb.2013.2242).
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