Mushroom lifecycle in brief:

Each spore is a haploid set of the chromosomes of the given mushroom species. It takes a full set of chromosomes (one pair of each type there is) to make an adult, or diploid organism. The spores germinate into monokaryotic mycelium which meet up with other monokaryotic mycelium. If the other monokaryotic mycelium expresses a different mating type (there's even multiple "sexes" to help ensure genetic diversity), the two cross over and fuse forming a dikaryotic mycelium which is diploid, containing a full set of chromosome pairs for the species.

Eventually conditions are right and a mushroom forms. Within the cap, in specialised cells called basidia, meiosis occurs and basidiospores, or just spores, are formed, each one containing one of each type of chromosome but a mixture of the possible combinations of chromosomes originally carried by the two parental spores.

So within species hybrids are quite possible and a simple matter of isolating monokaryotic mycelia from each strain and letting nature take its course when you bring them into proximity with one another.

What I'd like to get off my chest is that the very definition of a species is that it cannot interbreed successfully with any other species out there, and if it can successfully interbreed with another species out there, it's not really another species but just another marking or subspecies of the same main species. E.g. a chihuahua and a wolf are still Canis lupus, you just tack a familiaris on the end of the chihuahua's name to designate its domesticated status, but if you bred them you'd get puppies which would grow into sexually mature adults. Conversely, a horse and a donkey, if you breed them you actually do get a viable offspring, which is surprising in its own right, but it is sexually sterile and always "male", they are not the same species. This is the most basic, most simple definition of species. So, whenever the thought enters your head that maybe FMF's B+ or mexicana is somehow an azure/cubie hybrid or a mexicana/cubie hybrid, or that some of the wild crosses that PES is claiming might be the real thing, the answer is, "NO, it's not." If it were possible at all to cross different species of mushrooms, it would be a oneshot hybrid from which you could not get viable spores. The way similar looking mushrooms are confirmed as the same or different species is by growing out monokaryotic mycelium and seeing if it cross with one another or not, different species do not cross and therefore do not make interspecies hybrids.

These things are the results of careful selection within a single species and nothing more.

At the same time, "mushrooms reproduce asexually" has been drilled into my head since the first bio course I took in junior high. Compton's Encyclopedia definition of a spore:

The microscopic, one-celled organisms by which bacteria, fungi, and green plants reproduce are called spores. By means of a process called asexual reproduction, spores are able to grow into new individuals without uniting with another reproductive cell. Thus spores are distinguished from gametes, which are reproductive cells that must unite with gametes of the opposite sex in order to form a new organism. The latter process is called sexual reproduction.

How am I supposed to reconcile these seemingly conflicting pieces of information?

-peace- www.thehawkseye.com

the definition of a spiecies is that it is unique genetically and not merly a hybrid of other spiecies....most spiecies can successfully cross breed with other spiecies within the same genus and often the same family...the orchid family, for instance, has 10,000's of inter genus hybrids recorded....it is possible to interbreed Felis domestica with Felis africanensis..and inter family crossings are possible with some of the higher organisms...fish..and even mamalia...so you are wrong on that one

the nomenclature is:
kingdom
phylum
class
order
family
genus
spiecies
var *see note
spiecies ====>spiecies always
genus g1, spiecies x1,=====>genus b1,spiecies y1 most of the time

family x,===> family y, never

**
variety or var.=a subclass below genus used when a class of organisms is different from the originating spiecies but not so different to be a new spiecies..

[This message has been edited by techno (edited September 29, 2000).]

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"If I catch ya wit ya draws down I'ma do ya"......Tec-9