Let’s say someone creates a viral fungicide… but things go awry (as this sort of thing usually does). Instead of killing off one fungus, it kill off *all *fungus. Worldwide. It spreads easily, so within five years it’s spread everywhere.
What happens? It seems to me that this’d be a Very Big Deal. My gut says that we probably wouldn’t even notice for a while, but by the time we did, it’d be too late.
Seems like this’d make a good end-of-the-world novel, similar to Knight’s *Fungus *and Pelligrino’s Dust.
We’d notice quickly. Yeast is a fungus. Bread doesnt rise any more, beer, wine and cider doesn’t ferment. We’d notice that before we noticed there were no more mushrooms, and before we noticed a significant reduction in decay processes.
The problem goes way beyond inhibiting decay processes (which would have a major impact on nutrient recycling and soil fertility). Many plants depend on mutualistic fungi that help them absorb nutrients through their roots (mycorrhizae). Without them many plants would die. It’s also been found that many plants have what are called endophytic fungi inside their tissues. While the function of these are not well understood, they might well have major effects on plant physiology.
True. I think there would be round after round of cascading extinctions. I don’t think everything would go belly up even sfter a very long time without fungi, but it woukd make quite a big difference as it played out.
No certain kinds of cheese either. And I don’t think you could digest your food, although I don’t know if any of the gut flora could be considered fungus.
Dead bodies wouldn’t break down, would they?
There are a few fungi in the gut flora, but most of it consists of bacteria. Under the “two kingdom” classification, bacteria were classed with the fungi, and hence like fungi were considered plants. (Hence the term “gut flora.”) Bacteria help us digest our food, but the role of fungi if any is not well known.
Most putrefaction is caused by bacteria, although fungi play a role. Fungi are more important in the decomposition of plants by decomposing cellulose.
Okay, so we’ve got no beer. That’s probably enough of an apocalypse for most people.
Only unleavened bread. Not a huge deal, but it would be noticeable immediately.
Certain cheeses would be gone. Only the ivory tower types and the French would be noticeably affected by this.
Some plants wouldn’t be able to process nutrients. Okay, now things are getting scary. We’d have to find food sources to replace those that rely upon fungus. On the plus side, no corn smut to worry about.
Cellulose wouldn’t break down. This would be damn scary, I think. I can’t even imagine all of the second-order effects from this. Forests would die off, as would grasslands. All that debris would lead to fires, which would help break down the dead plants and get nutrients back into the ground. Not sure, though, how much fungal processing forests would need to get those nutrients to new plants, though.
Are there really no bacteria that can digest cellulose?
Anyway, I think we’re missing the secondary results here. The missing fungi would leave a huge nutrient competition area out of balance. Bacteria would eventually overgrow to compensate, and there’s little hope of predicting which, and how they might mutate as a result.
OTOH, human pollution would lower substantially, especially in first-world urban and suburban areas, as chlorinated disinfectants would be far less necessary. (I’m thinking of all those tons of Tilex and etc.)
This may actually be already happening here in VA. I haven’t been able to get a loaf of bread to rise for three weeks now.
Lots of bacteria digest cellulose, including the symbiotic ones that help ruminants break it down. What I said was that fungi are more important in decomposing plant tissue than they are in decomposing animal tissue because they decompose cellulose, not that bacteria weren’t significant in decomposing plant tissue.