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what are mushroom-growing termites


noha

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Hello,

Does any body know what is what are mushroom-growing termites.

does it refer to kinde of termites that help in growing mushrooms and fungi as set in one of the websites (Fungus-farming termites (Odontotermes obesus) are able to sniff out weedy, parasitic fungi (Pseudoxylaria) and selectively bury them alive because they smell different than the crops. Fungus-farming termites grow a fungus, Termitomyces, in carbon-dioxide rich environments of their nest mounds.)?

 

Here is the context:

A different nutritional strategy has evolved among a group of mushroom-growing termites in Africa and elsewhere in the Old World that use fungi rather than gut protists for cellulose digestion.
Termites grow Termitomyces mushrooms on their cellulose-rich faeces in towering mud mounds and eat the resulting compost.
From South America to parts of the southern United States, leaf-cutter ants cultivate different kinds of mushrooms in their underground nests.
The ants eat special buds that form as swellings on the fungal colony.

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Fungus-growing termites cultivate monocultures of a specific fungi (of a genus called Termitomyces) for food in their colony, analogously to human farmers growing crops. The termites forage for dead plant material in the environment, bring this into the mound and provide it to the fungus as a growth substrate. After fungal growth, the termites use the mixture of fungus and degraded plant material and also the asexual spores produced by the fungus as food. They also use the spores to inoculate new fungus gardens.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7469218/

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