Fractal Geometry and Microorganisms in the Environment

Quantifying dynamic resource allocation illuminates foraging strategy in Phanerochaete velutina

“…During these studies, a transition from symmetrical to asymmetric growth and differential N-resource allocation was observed, both in control colonies and to a greater extent following addition of an additional cellulose resource . These responses are analogous to those reported on the larger scale soil/wood microcosm systems (Dowson et al, 1988a(Dowson et al, , 1988b(Dowson et al, , 1988cBolton and Boddy, 1993;Donnelly et al, 1995;Wells et al, 1997Wells et al, , 1998aDonnelly and Boddy, 1998;Boddy et al, 1999;Boddy and Donnelly, 2008), and suggest that such microcosms may provide a tractable experimental system to quantify both foraging behaviour and resource allocation with good temporal and spatial resolution.…”

“…Fractal dimension in particular provides a measure of spacefilling that gives good discrimination between diffuse foraging by fine hyphae in comparison to more open corded networks. Nevertheless, as fractal dimension is a global property of the whole colony, it tends to disguise the origin of local spatial structure that actually leads to polarisation of the colony in response to encounter with a new resource, although it is possible to calculate fractal dimensions from sub-regions of the image (Boddy and Donnelly, 2008). Image analysis of the sectors with and without resource has provided some basic spatial resolution and is able to detect responses at earlier time points than unaided visual observation (Wells et al, 1998b;Harris and Boddy, 2005).…”

“…Morphological changes in foraging behaviour can be detected as changes in radial extension rate, area covered or fractal dimension (Bolton and Boddy, 1993;Boddy et al, 1999;Boddy and Donnelly, 2008). Fractal dimension in particular provides a measure of spacefilling that gives good discrimination between diffuse foraging by fine hyphae in comparison to more open corded networks.…”

Fungal network responses to grazing

“…The macroscopic behaviour of the colony can be measured by its radial growth rate, the surface area covered by the mycelium (hyphal coverage) and box-count mass fractal dimension (D BM ) or surface fractal dimension (D BS ) (Boddy and Donnelly, 2008;Boddy et al, 1999;Donnelly et al, 1995;Senesi and Boddy, 2002). At finer resolution, the network architecture can be determined directly from the cord connections, branch points and fusions (Bebber et al, 2007a,b;Boddy et al, 2009;Fricker et al, 2007aFricker et al, , 2008aLamour et al, 2007;Rotheray et al, 2008) using tools developed in graph theory (Albert and Barabasi, 2002;Amaral and Ottino, 2004;Dorogovtsev and Mendes, 2002;Newman, 2003).…”

Introduction to the Study of Environmental Fractals

“…30,31], but that was shown to exclude the extending colony margin from analysis. The technique is described in much greater detail in Chapter 3 [25], and applications are provided in Chapters 8 and 9 [32,33].…”