mycology

The eggs that weren't

awild | January 28, 2010

I did not expect everyone to nearly instantaneously solve yesterday's termite ball mystery.  I'm either going to have to post more difficult challenges (from now on, nothing will be in focus!) or attract a slower class of reader. Cuckoo fungus grows in a termite nest. As you surmised, those little orange balls are an egg-mimicking fungus. It is related to free-living soil fungi, but this one has adopted a novel growth form that is similar in diameter, texture, and surface chemistry to the eggs of Reticulitermes termites. These hardened sclerotia are carried about the termite nest as if…