EARTH.COM - After a wildfire tears through a landscape, the destruction looks absolute. Hillsides turn black, trees collapse into ash, wildlife scatters, and the soil itself seems lifeless. Then something unexpected happens. Within days or weeks, life creeps back. Not trees. Not deer. Fungi.
Some of these fungi were barely there before the fire. You couldn’t see them. You couldn’t easily detect them in the soil.
Yet after a blaze, they spread quickly across the burned ground. Scientists have long wondered how they manage to do it.
A new study from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), finally cracks that mystery. The answer, it turns out, is written in their genes.
Fungi survive and thrive after fires
For five years, researchers collected fungi from seven wildfire burn sites across California. They sequenced the fungi’s DNA and tested how some reacted when exposed to charcoal.
The corresponding author of the research is Sydney Glassman, UCR associate professor of microbiology and plant pathology.
“We knew certain fungi were heat resistant, that some could grow quickly in scars where competitors have been burned away, and that others could consume nutrients in charcoal,” she said. “Now we know the genetics behind these incredible abilities.”