E-Book Overview
Fungi are sessile, highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources both above and below the ground. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realise the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. They process and evaluate information and then modify their behaviour accordingly. These highly diverse competences show us that this is possible owing to sign(aling)-mediated communication processes within fungal cells (intraorganismic), between the same, related and different fungal species (interorganismic), and between fungi and non-fungal organisms (transorganismic). Intraorganismic communication involves sign-mediated interactions within cells (intracellular) and between cells (intercellular). This is crucial in coordinating growth and development, shape and dynamics. Such communication must function both on the local level and between widely separated mycelium parts. This allows fungi to coordinate appropriate response behaviors in a differentiated manner to their current developmental status and physiological influences.
E-Book Content
Biocommunication of Fungi
Guenther Witzany Editor
Biocommunication of Fungi
Editor Guenther Witzany Telos-Philosophische Praxis Bu¨rmoos, Austria
ISBN 978-94-007-4263-5 ISBN 978-94-007-4264-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4264-2 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London Library of Congress Control Number: 2012940531 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
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Preface
Why Biocommunication of Fungi? When we consider the biocommunication of fungi, we first must become familiar with the current terms of communication (and with the signalling system, what we would term language or code, which is used to communicate). Therefore, we should consider the results of the pragmatic turn in the philosophy of science in the 1970s and 1980s, wh