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They've been around for 600 million years, living in nearly every corner of our planet. Yet we know very little about - fungi. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

“Well, fungi are small microorganisms, and they are everywhere in the world, just everywhere. They’re their own separate kingdom, separate from the animal kingdom and from the plant kingdom.”

Dr. Rebecca Ganley is with the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Idaho,

“The fungal kingdom is very large. And it’s estimated that there’s 1.5 million fungal species, and the fungal kingdom is approximately six times the size of the plant kingdom, so it’s very large. And although it’s very large, not very many of the fungi have actually been described. Most of them, we don’t have any idea what they are, whereas for the plant and animal kingdom, most of the species have already been described.”

But even though we're relatively ignorant of these ubiquitous organisms, fungi have an important impact on our daily lives.

“Yes. There’s a wide variety of different fungal types. There’s the common mushrooms, which people eat. There are also yeasts, which are used to make bread and alcohol. There’s fungi that are involved in making cheese. There’s also fungi which grow on humans, like athlete’s foot is a fungi. There’s all the different plant diseases, the ones that you get in your common garden, ones that are on trees. There’s fungi in the soil, fungi within trees. Fungi are just everywhere possible that you can think of.”

We'll hear more on fungi in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner. music