Soil Mycology
Soil mycology is a branch of Biology concerned specifically with fungi in soil. There are 3 main functional groups of soil fungus.
Mycelium
Image credit: Michael Allsop
Overview
Very few fungi have negative effects on things like plants that live in the soil, parasitic fungi are the only fungi that can negatively affect them, and they are a small proportion of the total fungal species. Most are beneficial or mutualistic, saprophytes digest organic matter, thus feeding plants, microbes etc. Mutualistic fungi e.g. mycorrhiza have relationships with around 95% of all plants (Willis, 2018) of which most would struggle to survive without them.
Parasitic fungi
Parasitic fungi can cause disease in plants, animals, and humans, they can cause serious issues such as the decline of aquatic species. The Chytridiomycota family for example is a parasitic fungus which has driven some species to extinction (Lips, 2016). However, if we harnessed the potential of parasitic fungi, they are natural bio pesticides which if used and selected carefully cause fewer negative effects than manmade pesticides.
Parasitic fungi on a dead arthropod
Image credit: Gilles San Martin [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from flickr.com
Wood decomposing fungi
Image credit: Michael Allsop
Saprophytic fungi (decomposers)
As has already been mentioned saprophytic fungi are decomposers, they serve one of the most vital roles by doing so. They are a key part of the soil food web (Kubartová et al., 2009), without organisms such as saprophytic fungi we would be inundated with dead leaves, wood, animals, pretty much all organic matter is somewhat decomposed by fungi.
Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungal spore
Image credit: Universiy of Derby, Microbiology students (2018).
Mutualistic fungi
Mutualistic fungi also known as Mycorrhizae, colonise plant and tree roots, the term mutualistic means that they benefit the host plant and vice versa. Mycorrhizae help in the uptake of phosphorus, nitrogen, micronutrients, and water (Young, 2012) and in return they receive carbon. The next page takes a much more in depth look at Mycorrhizae.
