Resumen de Fungi have mini water cannons that fire spores
Some fungi have a special talent: they shoot out their spores at high speed. Traveling just a centimeter away from the fungus is enough for the spores to catch the breeze and disperse, but exactly how fungi eject them has been a mystery for a century. "Spore launching is responsible for reproduction in tens of thousands of species--about one-third of the fungal kingdom," says Chuan-Hua Chen at Duke University in North Carolina, whose team has observed a cannon-like aspect to the process. Using an inkjet printer, they built up a pair of droplets on a 200-micrometer-long styrofoam "spore" and watched with a high-speed camera. When the droplets merged, energy spread down the length of the new drop on the flat side of the spore. "This is like a cannon, with a spore as the cannonball," says Chen. "The Buller's drop is like the ammunition."
