Miscellaneous News

1. The BAS is looking for a new webmaster. The current webmaster will train you and hand it over to you, and provide support as necessary. The website is written in simple HTML. You will need a computer and a high speed internet connection (you will need to download a 6GB backup in a reasonable amount of time). $300 is the annual payment. You may be asked to support admin of the BAS Facebook pages as well.

2. The BAS has a new President. Welcome Ken Schwarz!

3. Sound Strategy: Want to Make Fungus Grow? Add In a Little White Noise.

The discovery that sound improves the growth rate of beneficial fungus suggests that dirges in the dirt may help restore forests.

Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. Sound also seems to help some bacteria grow, said Jake Robinson, a microbial ecologist at Flinders University in Australia who studies the soil microbiome. It was this work with bacteria that inspired Dr. Robinson and his colleagues to see if the same were true of a beneficial fungus.

First, the scientists lined big plastic tubs with soundproofing foam to make quiet places for their fungi to live in. Then they put petri dishes with a dab of T. harzianum in the tubs. Once a day, they played some of the dishes 30 minutes of white noise drawn from a YouTube video intended to help people with tinnitus.

It's not clear why the sound had these effects. Dr. Robinson speculates that the sound waves may be striking receptors in the fungal cells that are sensitive to pressure. These receptors could then lead to a cascade of signals that switch on growth genes. The researchers plan to look closer at what genes are switched on and off in the presence of sound to help understand the effects.

Perhaps silence indicates a hostile environment, one where no other organism has been able to grow. It might also be that certain kinds of sound fend some microbes off but give off a come-hither vibe to others.

"It might be you can create a certain soundscape that has an invigorating, growth-promoting effect," he said -- music to a forest's ears.

 Greenwood, Veronique, NYT,22 Oct 2024