Mushroom & Millipede Hunting

Yesterday was a nice day outside, and I figured it would probably be one of the last before the snow started falling. I decided to take advantage of this, and set off to find some mushrooms. (Also, it was snowing when I woke up this morning, so I was correct in my assumption. Maybe I should take up weather forecasting.)

I packed some collecting supplies and set off for the nature trail near my old elementary school. It has a nice array of habitat types and gratuitous amounts of decaying logs, so I was optimistic that I would find some nice mushrooms. However, almost immediately after I stepped onto the trail, my trip turned into millipede hunting. It's just too difficult to resist turning over every decaying log I find in hopes of getting some millipedes out of it.

My habit ended up paying off: I found many millipedes and collected 7 specimens from 4 separate species. It's astounding how many little critters live in decaying wood and the surrounding leaf litter. It's a miniature rain forest in there, but is often overlooked. It's really quite easy to collect arthropods using leaf litter: take a few fistfuls of leaf litter and maybe a little dirt, stuff it into a plastic bag, and later transfer it into a funnel. Put a light bulb above the funnel and a jar with some alcohol underneath the funnel, and give it a few days. All the arthropods will dig down through the leaves and fall into the jar. Put your catch underneath the microscope and you'll see all kinds of spiders, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, millipedes, insects, mites, and so much more.

Though my excursion focused on millipedes, I did eventually incorporate fungi as well.

Another mysterious fungus, along with a millipede.

I rooted through the leaf litter near a dead log and turned over this old piece of bark. The fungus caught my eye long enough to distract me from the millipede (which I did catch later). It reminded me of another fungus I saw a few summers ago and blogged about here. I'm still at a loss for what they could be and need to find a good resource on fungi to research it more. I poked one of the drops and it ran onto the wood, into which it was readily absorbed.

The millipede ran surprisingly quickly, as they're usually slow. It didn't try to curl into a spiral when I picked it up, but rather thrashed around a bit instead. This is atypical for millipedes, which was intriguing. I think it's a Chordeumatid in the genus Cleidona, but I'll need to get it under a microscope and look at a few features before I can be sure.

The other millipedes I found were much more millipede-like in their habits. The most abundant millipede I found was a Polydesmid that I've found a few other times, but have yet to identify. 

Crawling around its new home, a nice plastic container I prepared.

It looks similar to another millipede I've seen before, Pseudopolydesmus serratus, though it doesn't fluoresce under UV light. I grabbed three specimens, and one is a male, so I should be able to figure it out.

After turning over enough decaying logs, I've learned which millipedes I can expect to see more often than not. And like usual, the beautiful Euryurus leachii, showed up under the logs I looked at.

This millipede is a little over an inch long and is easy to recognize. It has a blunt epiproct (its "tail"), separating it from other Polydesmids. The orange spots along its back and at the edges of its paranota, combined with the purplish hue of its body, readily identify this native millipede. It's certainly in the running for most beautiful millipede in Ohio. Once you cross into the central US, however, be careful: Auturus evides is a lookalike. I haven't seen a specimen of A. evides for myself, so I'm not yet sure how to differentiate them.

Another reason for E. leachii's beauty: its fluorescence under UV light.

Not to be outdone by all these amazing millipedes, the fungi made a comeback somewhere around the Soggy Bottom Trail.

It's usually much soggier. 

Decaying wood isn't only for millipedes, it's also great habitat for moss and mushrooms!

Those little brown mushrooms made a cute little home in a hole in the log, flanked by moss. If you look closely at the stalks coming up from the moss, you can see the calyptra (the green sheath) around the spore capsule. Think of the calyptra as a protective blanket keeping the capsule safe until it's time to let the spores go. If you look in the background, you'll also see a polypore coming out of the log...

The Soggy Bottom Trail did not disappoint!

Mysterious Oozing Mycelium

That title sounds delicious, doesn't it? To clear up the confusion, I'll go ahead and post the picture now.

This is the reason I searched for "oozing mycelium" on Google. I never fathomed that I would search those words.

I chose a nice, sunny day last summer to go for a walk in some woods near my house (thus getting me out of the Sun while still being able to claim I spent some time outside) and found some neat stuff. The most perplexing thing I found turned out to be this fungus. The white parts you see are the mycelia of the fungus--masses of fungal roots, essentially. They spread over the substrate, and the fungus takes up nutrients through them. The substrate here is decaying wood.

As for the red droplets on the fungus, I'm sort of at a loss. The closest species I've found is Hydnellum peckii, also known as the bleeding tooth fungus. The droplets of red liquid are there, sure, but that's it. I can't find any images of what the mycelia of H. peckii look like, so I can't compare it; I'm only finding pictures of the mushrooms. Fungi are mostly known by their mushrooms to the general public, but the mushroom is the fruiting body--only a portion of the fungus. The rest of it is underground as mycelia. In the top part of my second photo it looks like there might be the stalk of a mushroom, but I can't tell for sure, and I didn't snap any pictures from an angle that might help me figure it out.

It's been almost a year since I took those pictures, so maybe if I go hunting around in the same area I'll spot a mushroom for this species. I'll get to that after the rain stops.

An Unfortunate Cicada

I've been reading about cicadas and entomogenous* fungi lately, which reminded me of a picture I had from back in September when I was at the field station working on my capstone project.

*This is an awesome new word I learned today-- it means growing on or in the bodies of insects.

I found this annual cicada, still in its larval stage, before it emerged as an adult, with fungus growing from it. I was thinking that the fungus itself might have killed it, but that's tough to say for sure. The cicada could have died before the fungus came along, of course.

Still, it would be interesting if it was the fungus that killed the cicada. So many fungi associate with the roots of trees, upon which cicadas feed while they're underground. Maybe some species attack the cicadas to protect the tree. Someone should investigate that.

...but not me, currently. I'm focused on capstone for now.

Science Video Friday: Fungi Edition

Fungi are pretty important. In fact, without fungi, forests as we know them probably wouldn't exist. Why? Because fungi form mutualistic relationships with plant roots that help the plant grow. There are a couple different ways that fungi can do this, but it has the same result: aiding plant growth and stabilizing the health of the plant.

Unfortunately, many people don't know about fungal-plant relationships and how important they are to the ecosystem, and fungi are shunned. Some mushrooms are considered pretty, but for the most part, fungi don't receive the recognition they deserve. Paul Stamets is working to correct this, and judging from this clip, he's doing an amazing job.

Old Man's Cave - Hocking Hills, Ohio

Old Man's Cave is an interesting place. It's part of Hocking Hills, an Ohio state park, and is located near Logan, Ohio. The state parks in Ohio are wonderful places to enjoy nature, find bugs, and just revel in various types of biology, and Old Man's Cave is no exception. The cave is named after a settler who lived in the cave after the Civil War, Richard Rowe. He was killed by an accidental shot from his own gun, and it's rumored that local Native Americans buried him near the Cave. Who knows if that's true or not, but it's an interesting story.

Moss covers every rock around the park, and there are good amounts of lichens and bryophytes as well.

While I was there, I found a lot of mushrooms. If you're a mycologist, you'll enjoy the place.

Unfortunately, my mycology skills are pretty non-existent right now. I'll have to come back to the ecology and identification of these at a later date. But still, very neat, and a good variety for only a cursory glance. I only had an hour or two there, but I'm positive there's a lot more to explore and discover.

Conocephalum conicum - Scented liverwort/Snake liverwort

The liverworts, as usual, were quite pretty as well. They were very prevalent in the moist areas near the bottom and sides of the caves, and by the waterfalls.

I found one very interesting insect while examining the lichen on a tree. Strangely enough, the lichen started to move. It actually turned out to be the larva of a lacewing, an insect within the order Neuroptera. Lacewing larvae will routinely cover themselves with debris: lichen, dirt, dead insects, etc. to help them blend in with their surroundings, or hide their bodies. It's pretty good camouflage, you wouldn't know they were there if they stayed still.

Sadly, with only an hour and a half to explore, I missed a lot. The only solution to that, of course, is to return with more time to explore.