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RE: Mushrooms can have 4,000+ different sexes
THis is one of those "facts about nature" that I have read, but it is still hard to work out - for me, at least. And the mushrooms, themselves, have different numbers of sexes. The closest I can get is to think of plant varieties. Some apples need pollen from other apples. But only the pollen from certain varieties will work, not all of them.
And in fungi, the spores are what mate. So how many different sexes might be present within a small area, like my yard? How far do those spores have to go to find another fungus of a different sex? So crazy!
I agree that it it definitely very difficult to grasp this fact ;) I also think the mating types function more like varieties than genuine sexes. One thing I completely forgot to include in the post is that the meting type only determines what other individuals the fungi can mate with, and does not affect other attributes (like we are used to in animals and even plants). So the mushroom will look exactly the same no matter which mating type it is.
Answering how many mating types present in your yard is impossible. With several thousand options in Basidiomycota, I don't think it is likely that any are the same mating type unless its a clone from one of the other fungi.
As I mentioned, the mating types is a mechanism to mainly prevent self-fertilization, so I don't think fungi really has a problem when it comes to finding available mates.
Now there's a math problem -- What densities and arrangements of spore distribution would require 40 sexes, 400, or 4000 to create a sufficient level of genetic mixing over the long run?
Does it mean that my yard is so full of fungus spores of all different kinds of fungi, that they have to be able to sort themselves out? I was amazed this fall to see a new mushroom in my yard, the Shaggy Parasol - in 4 widely-spaced locations across my 1.3 acres. Their spores must have been everywhere across the landscape at one time.