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RE: The Amateur Mycologist - Puntas Arenas Part 2: Cyttaria darwinii
Those mushrooms hence live in symbiosis with the tree they grow on, don't they? Interesting to learn. I had never heard about such a thing before :)
PS: amazing pictures (even the one that is not yours)!
They are indeed living in a state of simbiosis. Parasitism and other special biological relationships between other life and fungi are not uncommon. Mushrooms with special, mutually beneficial relationships to specific trees have whats called a Mycorrhizal relationship with the trees. Usually though this will manifest as a relationship with the root system, where the mycelium interacts with the roots in an exchange of nutrition. This is really a mutualistic relationship.
Parasitic fungal species exist all over the place - think Cordyceps growing out of bugs or even ringworm, a fungal infection on human skin. When it comes to trees, generally mushrooms growing out of the wood are, in the short or long term, causing more damage than they are helping.
What's remarkable about Cyttaria is that they appear to cause no harm to the trees at all, with whole forests and old growth trees thriving while still exuding hundreds of the mushrooms each season.
Whether the relationship is mutualistic, commensalistic or parasitic isn't totally clear from what I can tell - all the resources I've read have not had a 100% clear answer - but the trees seem to be doing just fine and have been for many many many years, so it seems a fair guess that the relationship is either mutualistic or commensalistic, both of which are pretty weird for a mushroom that grows like Cyttaria does.
Of course, Cyttarias whole life cycle is hella wierd to begin with, recurrent growth out of galls... Just a really strange fungus.
You read my mind. I was almost automatically associating parasitism with fungi and I was amazed to read about an exception. Thanks anyways for the clarifications :)