Fungi: Oyster mushroom and Pilobolus (Pretty Cutie Manly)

Pretty Cutie Manly: Jade T., Thinh P., Karissa C., Karissa G.

We had the opportunity to grow our own oyster mushrooms.

Oyster mushrooms

Kingdom: Fungi
Phylum: Basidiomycota
Class: Agaricomycetes
Order: Agaricales
Family: Pleurotaceae
Genus: Pleurotus

We started growing the mushrooms on the 4th of April 2016 and after two days we checked on our mushrooms again and there were small mushrooms on one side of the bag. We sprayed the oyster mushrooms every day to ensure that the mushrooms had enough water to grow. Unfortunately, all of us did not manage to take a picture of how the mushroom patch looked like on the first day but we did manage to document the growth of the mushroom after that.

Figure 1: Our oyster mushroom taken on the 6th of April.

After a few more days, we took another picture of the progress of our mushroom.

Figure 2: Our oyster mushroom taken on the 11th of April. 

On the 13th of April 2016, we took a sliver of mushroom from the stalk as well as the gills and had a look at it under the microscope at 40X magnification and this is what we saw.

Figure 3: Stalk of the mushroom.

Figure 4: Gills of the mushroom.

In figure 3, we could see long thin filamentous structures which might be hyphae and in figure 4, we can see tiny circular structures and some of them were green in color. We deduced that the circular structures could the spores of the mushroom.
We also decided to remove all the mushrooms from the surface of the bag to bring home and cook. However, since we did not leave a single mushroom behind, our little mushroom patch stopped producing anymore mushrooms after that but the mushrooms that we managed to scavenge were really delicious. This is how our poor mushroom patch looked at the end.

Figure 5: Our poor barren mushroom patch. 

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus

Now on to our Pilobolus.

Pilobolus 

Domain: Eukaryote
Kingdom: Fungi
Phylum: Zygomycota
Class: Mucoromycotina
Order: Mucorales
Family: Pilobolaceae
Genus: Pilobolus 

We placed the petri dish containing the Pilobolus in a milkshake cup and covered it with aluminum foil with a hole on top which had a piece of cellophane tape over it to 'capture' the spores that the Pilobolus ejects. This is what we saw when we looked at the tape covering the hole in the aluminum foil.

Figure 6: The spores captured on the tape.

Figure 7: The spores actually ended up being ejected all over the cup.

Figure 8: Our Pilobolus.

Figure 9: Closer look at the Pilobolus spores under a dissecting microscope.

Figure 10: You can see the spores on the Pilobolus (kind of..)

As you can see, the spores from the Pilobolus did not all end up on the piece of cellophane tape. The Pilobolus is believed to orient itself towards the light first before ejecting it's spores so that the spores will be able to travel further, but it seems like only a few of our Pilobolus spores managed to land on the tape. And it seemed to form a smiley shape. Seems we got a cheerful set of Pilobolus.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilobolus

Comparing and contrasting these two fungi

Oyster mushroom and Pilobolus are both fungi but they are from different phyla. The oyster mushroom is from the Basidiomycota phylum while the Pilobolus is from the Zygomycota phylum. Both fungi are decomposers and both of them are heterotrophic, they obtain their carbon building blocks from an outside source. They feed on dead or decaying organic matter and obtain their nutrients from these organic matter. However, they live on different things. The oyster mushroom prefers to live on dead tree barks while Pilobolus resides in cow dung. The Pilobolus doesn't form a fruiting body but the oyster mushroom does. The mushroom that we eat is the fruiting body of the fungus. The gills of the mushroom is where all the spores reside. In the Pilobolus the spores are ejected from the sporangium once the Pilobolus has oriented its 'head' towards the sunlight so that it can be dispersed as far as possible. The spores from the mushroom are dispersed by the wind and it doesn't orient itself towards the sun.
In the Pilobolus life cycle, the spores form in the zygosporangium and the spores will remain in the zygosporangium until conditions are right. During the oyster mushroom life cycle, the spores are dispersed from the basiocarp and the spores are not stored. They are dispersed by the wind. The oyster mushroom is the fruiting body of the fungus while the Pilobolus does not form a fruiting body. During sexual reproduction, hyphae of different mating types will fuse together through a process known as plasmogamy and there will be 2 nuclei (heterokaryotic) in the cell. Eventually these two nuclei will fuse together through a process known as karyogamy. The fungi will undergo meiosis and produce haploid spores.

As a group we thought that these two experiments were fun and light. It would be a good idea to allow future Biology 213 students to grow their own mushroom and Pilobolus because they get to enjoy and eat the 'fruits' of their labor, no pun intended as well as have a look at how the Pilobolus eject their spores.