Re: The fungi did it

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

Casadevall chose a path that lead to an untestable dead end (sickly
dinosaurs), while he missed a prime opportunity to expand the debate into
interesting uncharted directions.  Just imagine the possible avenues his
paper could have taken if he had collaborated with knowledgeable K-T
researchers like Kirk Johnson, or he had collaborated with a
palynologist!   Nonetheless, as-is, the paper sparked debate,
unfortunately the debate centers around his untestable paleophysiological
hypothesis. <cougharm-wavingcough>

So, abandoning Casadevall's path, let's instead get empirical.   I know
nothin' 'bout spores, so I've got a bunch of questions:

How certain are we that a significant increase in fungal spores occurred
after the K-T impact event?  I had assumed that the huge *increase* in
spores within the K-T "spore spike" was due to fern blooms.  Ferns ain't
fungi.  How much *do* we currently know about the non-fern spore ecology
within the K-T "spore spike" layer?  And what about bacterial spores and
yeast spores in that same layer?

If this type of research has already been done, then I'd *really*
appreciate getting the reference.  But if the K-T boundary microfauna
hasn't yet been studied, then this would make an excellent PhD
dissertation for someone!


Someone wrote:
> (Note for the phylogenetically-retentive: Fungi 
> seems
> to be used in this paper in the old sense of the name, covering
everything
> from slime moulds to oomycetes to fungi proper :-S)


Dave M. wrote:
> Slime moulds and oomycetes don't infect
> animals, do they? (And isn't  there only
> one clade of the polyphyletic slime
> moulds that is pathogenic at  all?)


Excellent point!  And are these spores found in fossil soils?  Are their
spores diagnosable?  Are ANY spores from fossil fungi diagnosable?  Did
Casadevall even address these issues in his paper?  If not, what a waste
of an opportunity.

<pb>
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