In our Guest Editor series, we spotlight thought leaders from a range of industries as they tackle some of humanity's biggest challenges.

Andrew Howley is the Chief Editor of The Biomimicry Institute, including AskNature.org. With nearly 20 years in science communication – including over a decade at National Geographic – his career has been dedicated to making science and nature accessible to all. He specialises in revealing how nature’s patterns, systems, and designs can guide human innovation.

Nature's Lessons

As we work to strengthen our knowledge of and connection to the rest of the natural world, we also gain a deeper understanding of the paths that life has taken to thrive here on Planet Earth.

We can learn from these strategies and apply them to the challenges that we face.

This is sometimes a direct comparison; if we want to make something that flies, we can look at the wings of birds or the wings on the seeds that help disperse their genes far and wide. It can also be a less obvious connection. Some of the most fruitful efforts in biomimicry come from the most hidden lessons that nature holds, and many of these lessons come from fungi.

Meet the Mushrooms

Most people are familiar with fungi. Mushrooms are often how we first come to think of them and recognise them – knowing that some you can eat, and some, you never should. As we grow, we come to learn other interesting things about mushrooms and fungi – namely, that mushrooms are not “the thing.” Fungi is “the thing,” and a mushroom is merely the short-lived fruiting body of an organism that devotes most of its life and resources to underground structures woven throughout the soil. We call this mycelium.

Recently, people have come to know that fungi is this underground structure physically connects plants and other living things throughout an entire ecosystem. By physically touching the roots of trees distant from each other, the mycelia of fungi provide a conduit through which chemicals – be they nutrients or chemical signals – can travel.

Suzanne Simard is credited with bringing awareness of this to the public imagination through what she has termed the “Wood Wide Web.” The trees that seem immovable to us, that seem silent and solitary, are in fact connected through the mycelium of fungi and communicating constantly with each other.

The third most common, beloved fact about fungi is that they form their own unique category. They are not plants. They are not animals. They are fungi. As we think about ourselves as humans, it can be difficult sometimes to register that awareness that we are animals. Other animals are more like us than we've often given credence to.

We see animals – these active, mobile, often very obviously communicative organisms – as one thing, and then we see plants as the other. Fungi are neither plants nor animals, and they are by no means a midpoint between the two. There's not a spectrum that runs from plant to animal by way of fungi. The fungal world is simply another option.

Plants, Animals, and Fungi

For starters, most plants get their energy from sunlight, and most of the matter they need from the air. They build up complex molecules through photosynthesis and then break those sugars down to build and repair their bodies. They make their own food.

Most animals get the energy and material they need by catching other animals and plants, breaking them down, and absorbing their molecular components internally.

Fungi, as we said before, don't represent a midpoint between those options, but a separate approach. They digest externally. Those hyphae in the mycelium, weaving throughout the soil – or indeed throughout the bodies of plants and even animals – are secreting chemicals constantly that are breaking down substances around them into forms that they can absorb and use to power their processes and build their bodies.

That powerful ability to break down almost anything they encounter will come in handy as we explore some of the biomimetic potential, and some of the ways that the functions of fungi are harnessed directly by humans.

The other big difference is the structure of how they grow. To understand this, we have to look at the whole life cycle of a fungus. For our purposes, we’ll look at a specific kind of fungus: basidiomycetes which form mushrooms.

The mycelium will produce a fruiting body, which will then release spores. When a spore is dispersed, it begins to grow, and it grows into a thread-like structure, one cell wide, called a hypha. And that thread-like structure can grow and grow, and fork into two directions, and can also merge with growths from the same original spore or others that they interact with.

That thread-like growth is the primary direction of fungal life. As hyphae form and interact with each other, they continue to race forward on that road to growth – at times branching off and merging together – and thereby weave and form stronger structures.

That structure even goes through to the fruiting body of the mushrooms. If you can picture a mushroom that you're preparing for dinner, and see those thread-like lines in the stem – that’s that hyphal structure coursing through.

The mushroom slices or breaks apart at the slightest touch. This is partly because the whole structure is being driven by countless hyphae barreling forward into long, stretching threads. These bundle together to make the stem of the mushroom, cascade across the top, flatten out to make the gills, and at the end of the gills, release the spores.

Innovations Inspired by Fungi

Mycelium is a hyphal growth that develops rapidly and creates a very useful substance. It's strong but lightweight. It can take on all kinds of shapes and forms.

Innovators are making use of that – growing fungi in forms so that the mycelium will fill and pack an area. This produces a lightweight, strong material that can even be used for insulation.

Biohm is one company making industrial-grade building insulation by harnessing the growth and properties of mycelium to make bricks that are lightweight and resist heat transfer.

Mycelium can also be used to make packing material. If you've received an online shipment and your product is encased in a light, almost foamy, cardboard-like material that you couldn't quite put your finger on – it was likely made of mycelium, possibly from Ecovative or another such organisation. They're doing the same thing – growing mycelia in a form to produce a sturdy, lightweight object that can be used to perfectly fill the space around a custom article to be shipped, replacing the need for Styrofoam.

Another key aspect of fungi that is leading to great innovation is their chemical breakdown ability. Groups like Novobiom are harnessing this to remediate contaminated industrial soil. Others like Mycocycle are doing the same thing in different contexts, decomposing construction debris, for example, tackling asphalt shingles and old carpet from petroleum-based fibres.

While some of those materials can be directly recycled and reused, others simply cannot. They will go into landfills where they take up space and possibly leach or accumulate toxic chemicals. Mycocycle are seeding such debris with fungal spores to see what grows and what can break down.

This presents a two-fold opportunity. Once these hyphae begin to grow in this construction debris or amongst this toxic soil, they break down what's bad but they also produce what's good – namely mycelium – which can be used for all kinds of material products.

These are just a few examples of how humans are taking inspiration from, and harnessing, fungal life.

The Future of Fungi

What could the next wave of innovation look like? Here are a few fungal properties with untapped potential.

Take the hat thrower fungus. The fruiting bodies of this fungus form a large bulbous end that sits right under the spore. It absorbs liquid and swells like a water balloon until the pressure gets so high inside that the weak junction between this liquid-filled bulb and the spore on top gives way. The pressure from overfilling that vessel propels the spore out, allowing it to travel much farther than it would if it had just dropped, to possibly be carried on the wind or be caught in the fur or feathers of a passing animal, to go and spread and grow somewhere else.

This phenomenon – the way that spores are dispersed – is a common theme in fungal research.

Another, the bird’s nest fungus, produces a saucer-like structure that the spores sit inside. When rain comes and splashes into that upturned cup shape, it sends the spores flying – just as water from the kitchen sink splashes out and up the walls of a cereal bowl being washed by hand.

These are just a few of the untapped properties that could be used to address human challenges.

Sometimes, the best solution is to simply work with another organism. Merely by looking to nature for inspiration, we begin to put human activity on a path toward a more balanced relationship with the natural world.

If you would like to make learning from nature a more regular part of your own decision-making, in your life or profession, visit the Biomimicry Institute at AskNature.org. Find nearly 2,000 profiles of biological strategies from which you can learn and draw inspiration – and nearly 300 profiles of existing biomimetic innovations and applications.

Take the next step and Ask Nature about any and all questions you have or areas in which you’re looking for inspiration. You can also Ask Nature directly at AskNature.org/chat, where we harness the information-gathering abilities of AI, and focus it through nature’s genius – and the knowledge, context, and ethics of biomimicry – to produce more relevant, verifiable, and sound results.

And finally, if you’d like to join a global community of people practicing biomimicry, inspired by biomimicry, or teaching science and nature, you can join us on the AskNature Hive at AskNature.org/hive.