Fungal sporulation in a Permian plant fragment from Antarctica

Abstract

Documented evidence of fungi from the Permian of Antarctica mostly consists of dispersed remains that do not provide the whole complement of diagnostic features necessary to determine even broad systematic affinities. A dense cluster of > 250 fungal spores occurs within a degraded vascular plant (probably glossopteridalean) fragment in Permian permineralized peat from Skaar Ridge, central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica. Spores are spheroidal to ovoid, 50 µm in diameter, and possess a massive wall composed of three wall components (wc1-3); one or two canals extend from the spore lumen to the outside. The spores are embedded in a confluent meshwork of tenuous hyphae. Structural similarities exist between the fossil spores and spores produced by certain present-day Mucoromycota, Ascomycota, and Basidiomycota; however, the precise systematic affinities of the fossils cannot be determined. The relationship between the spore producer and its also host plant remains unresolved. Nevertheless, the spatial arrangement of the spores within the plant structure suggests that the fungus required the host for sporulation, and perhaps even influenced plant development for this purpose. This discovery adds to the inventory of distinctive fungal fossils from the Permian of Antarctica and presents a new type of association/interaction between a Permian fungus and a vascular plant.• Key words: development, interaction, Glossopteris, parasitism, saprotrophism, spore wall. HARPER, C

A study on the impact of fire crackers on airborne microflora during diwali

“…The increase in CFU of fungi on Diwali as recorded in the present study is attributed to the firing of ground crackers which has created turbulence at ground level, thereby liberating the fungal spores and increasing the fungal CFU. Fungal spores possess multilayered complex cell wall (Harper et al., 2018), due to which they are more resistant to chemical exposure (Li and Wang, 2003) when compared to bacteria. After Diwali, as firing crackers ceased, the turbulence of air got reduced, thus resulting in similar CFU as that recorded prior to Diwali.…”

Filamentous cyanobacteria preserved in masses of fungal hyphae from the Triassic of Antarctica

“…Evidence of microbial life appears to be generally rare in regions of the peat that contain well-preserved plant remains, but rather occurs in peat comprising (partially) degraded and tattered plant material not worthwhile for investigators interested in the plants and, thus, are often not seen (Taylor & Krings, 2010). On the other hand, the Fremouw Peak permineralized peat is interpreted to have developed in a three-step process (Schopf, 1971;Taylor, Taylor & Collinson, 1989), through which fragile structures may have been altered secondarily or destroyed (Harper et al, 2018). Finally, the lack of evidence for these organisms from permineralized peat elsewhere, (e.g., DiMichele & Phillips, 1994;Galtier, 2008;McLoughlin & Strullu-Derrien, 2015;Slater, McLoughlin & Hilton, 2015), could mean that peat-forming paleoenvironments were perhaps generally not conducive to the preservation of cyanobacteria.…”