Fungi evolved their weird and wild shapes in two big bursts

Fungi advanced their bizarre and wild shapes in two massive bursts

The huge array of shapes that fungi can take, together with vibrant mushroom caps and tangles of thread-like moulds, advanced in two massive bursts lots of of hundreds of thousands of years in the past

Dasyscyphella nivea, a cup fungus that belongs to the sac-bearing group

Andy Sands/naturepl

The wild array of anatomical selection in fungi – from the thread‑like tangles of some mould species to vibrant mushrooms with dazzling caps – has its roots in two distinct bursts of evolution lots of of hundreds of thousands of years in the past. These massive jumps in variation appear to be linked to evolutionary boosts within the variety of traits that make up every species, often called an organism’s complexity.

Detailed analyses of anatomical complexity are restricted, says Thomas Smith, who's now …