Edit: looking at all the elaborate replies, I cannot help being amazed. Here I thought the Fedi is overrepresented by computer geeks (such as yours truly) but obviously they’ve got NOTHING on the biologically inclined here! 🥰😍
If poisonous mushrooms are poisonous because it is advantageous for the survival of the specific species, are non poisonous mushroom relatively speaking weaker, less well equipped for the furthering of their species? I suppose that the ability to survive and further a species is multifaceted and that being poisonous or the lack thereof is just one of many parameters?
Depends on many variables…
Mushroom in an env with no animals that eat it never had to evolve a mechanism for defense.
Poison shrooms may use that to deter foragers and foragers evolved to not eat them for survival.
Most traits have or had a purpose that may have helped a species survive and adapt. And there are some that seem to want to go extinct, looking at you pandas.
There are some flaws in the common understanding of survival of the fittest, but I will ignore that for now.
Poison is usually energy intensive to make, so there is an investment from the mushroom in being harder to eat. If there is not a strong pressure from predators, or the mushroom adopts a different strategy like making tons of fruiting bodies (mushrooms), it might not be worth the cost to make the poison.
Finally, poison doesn’t automatically win the evolutionary race. We eat tons of stuff that the plant/mushroom intended to be a deterrent or poison (why are peppers spicy?).
Excellent points would also like to add that sometimes passing through a digestive system is also part of the process. Hot peppers are actually a really good example of this. When a bird eats the pepper, it doesn’t digest the seeds and it shits them out everywhere while it’s flying. Mammals, by contrast, usually do digest / destroy the seeds. So capsaicin (the thing that makes the pepper hot) actually targets a receptor that mammals have and birds don’t. You can actually buy squirrel deterring birdseed that’s coated with capsaicin, but sometimes the squirrels just develop a taste for spiciness.
This is specifically the case for fungi too.
Most mushrooms varieties want to be eaten so that an animal can spread the spores, and the spores are primed by the digestive scarification process. Few mushrooms are toxic to all species.
Sounds like it needs even more spicy
THC is also a detterant
it’s usually not good for your survival if you’re stoned (if you’re a wild animal)
And now it’s suddenly a reproductive strategy. The same with what chili intended as poison. Hemp and chili wouldn’t grow a tenth as much as they do if it wasn’t fornus liking their poison.
If poisonous mushrooms are poisonous because it is advantageous for the survival of the specific species, are non poisonous mushroom relatively speaking weaker, less well equipped for the furthering of their species?
It depends on many factors/variables. For instance, if they spread by being eaten and then shit out in a different area then being poisonous could work against them. If they don’t have something that preys on them by eating them, then producing poison can make them do work that would be better spent in some other fashion.
I suppose that the ability to survive and further a species is multifaceted and that being poisonous or the lack thereof is just one of many parameters?
Correct
