The Royal Society Open Science has just published a paper on fungi communication through electrical impulses. This communication between mushrooms is possible due to the organization of the fungus in a network of mycelia, filaments that lie below the surface. Between these mycelia, there is the passage of 50 different electrical impulses which, in an analogy, would be like 50 words of a dialect.
This phenomenon is similar to the activity that happens in human beings, when neurons communicate through different electrical potentials. In this article, we will discuss how fungi, especially mushrooms, manage to “talk” to each other. If you are curious about the world of fungi and advances in science, check out this text in full!
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In addition to the ability to communicate, the institute also discovered that hyphae allow “dialogue” to take place even when fungi are far apart. With this, they were able to capture different sequences of electrical pulses between fungi of the same species.
After this discovery, researchers from the Royal Society Open Science tested the possibility of different species of fungi communicating with the same “language”.
Among the four species of fungus studied – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar – it was discovered that each of them has its own “language”. This is because they presented different intervals between the peaks of electricity and also different combinations between the frequencies of the pulses.
Okay, but how do you know these electrical pulses aren't just a coincidence? Guided by Professor Andrew Adamatzky, the group of researchers tested the fungi and confirmed that with the same stimuli, the mushrooms react with the same electrical impulses.
Therefore, it is possible to say that mushrooms have a vocabulary that works similarly to those used by humans. But more research is needed to find out more about the amazing world of mushrooms.