Intraspecific Antagonism - Applications of Intraspecific Antagonism

Applications of Intraspecific Antagonism

Although the attribution of individual status to the mycelia confined by intraspecific zone lines is a comparatively new idea, zone lines themselves have been known since time immemorial. The term spalting is applied by woodworkers to wood showing strongly-figured zone lines, particularly those cases where the area of "no-man's land" between two antagonistic conspecific mycelia is colonised by another species of fungus. Dematiaceous hyphomycetes, with their dark-coloured mycelia, produce particularly attractive black zone lines when they colonise the areas occupied by two antagonistic basidiomycete individuals. Spalted wood can be difficult to work, since different individual wood-rotting fungi have different decay efficiencies, and thus produce zones of different softness, and the zone lines themselves are usually unrotted and hard.

Instraspecific antagonism can also sometimes be of assistance in quickly recognising the membership of clones in those fungi, particularly root-rots such as Armillarea where individual mycelia may colonise large areas, or more than one tree.

It is even the subject of a recent patent.