Chapter 20: Homobasidiomycetes: Gasteromycetes

Welcome to Last Minute Lecture.

This free chapter overview is designed to help students review and understand key concepts.

These summaries supplement not replaced the original textbook and may not be redistributed or resold.

For complete coverage, always consult the official text.

Get ready to dive into a truly wild and often surprising corner of the fungal kingdom.

Today we're exploring a peculiar and incredibly diverse group known as the Gastromycetes.

Now, if you think you know fungi, prepare to have your expectations, well, quite literally defied.

Yeah, our mission for this deep dive is really to unpack some pretty dense scientific information.

It's from a key chapter of Introduction to Fungi.

Right.

And we want to make it accessible, engaging for you, our listener, especially since, you know, we don't have visuals here.

Exactly.

The goal is to highlight the unique biology and the real world significance of these remarkable organisms.

Hopefully give you those aha moments.

And here's the core premise, the sort of big idea that defines them.

Gastromycetes are often called an unnatural assemblage.

Why?

Because they're primarily defined by what they don't do, which is violently discharge their spores.

We're talking about fungi that essentially gave up on that explosive spore dispersion.

That's the key.

So, okay, let's unpack this.

So when we talk about Gastromycetes,

they're defining, well, it's almost a negative characteristic, right?

Their basidiospores are not actively launched from their basidia.

Right.

It's a stark contrast to most other basidiomycetes, which famously eject their spores, those ballista spores, with a kind of, well, impressive force.

Yeah, that little water droplet mechanism.

Exactly.

For Gastromycetes, these spores get a different name.

Statismospores.

Think stationary spores.

Oh, okay.

They just sit there, often symmetrically poised.

And here's the crucial difference.

The basidia, where the spores form, they don't open directly to the outside air.

Right.

Instead, they release spores into internal cavities within the fruit body itself.

The spores only get out when the surrounding fungal tissue just breaks down or dries out.

It's a much more passive approach.

And that internal production, that actually gives them their name, Gastromycetes, right, from the Greek gaster, meaning stomach.

Precisely.

Stomach fungi, because they keep their spores locked inside, you see.

So the whole fruit body is the gastrocarp, and that spore mass inside, enclosed by the wall, the pyridium, that's the gliba.

Correct.

Gliba, that's the key internal part.

Okay.

And in terms of their general life cycle,

most Gastromycetes follow a pattern you see in many fungi.

They're typically heterothalic, meaning they need two compatible partners to reproduce sexually.

Two to tango.

Exactly.

A spore germinates, forms a primary mycelium that fuses with another compatible one, forms a dichariotic secondary mycelium.

That's the main fungal body that eventually produces the gastrocarps.

Got it.

And inside those gastrocarps, that's where the action happens.

Nuclear fusion, then meiosis, creating the new haploid basidia spores.

And they sometimes have asexual spores too.

They do, yeah.

Sometimes they produce these asexual propagules, like a backup plan, which can also start new fungal colonies.

So what's their day job?

What are they doing out there?

Well, most Gastromycetes are saprotrophic.

Decomposers.

Yeah, nature's recyclers, feeding on dead organic stuff.

You'll find them on soil, rotting wood, other vegetation, even dung sometimes.

And they form those cords, right?

Those network things.

Often, yes.

Mycelial cords are rhizomorphs.

They're like these tiny complex fungal highway systems, really good for moving nutrients around.

But not all are just recyclers.

No, definitely not.

Some are incredibly important partners in forest ecosystems.

Genera like Rhizopogonon, Scleroderma, and Pisolithus.

These are key ectomycorsal associates of forest trees.

Ah, the tree partnership.

A vital symbiotic relationship.

Good for the fungus, good for the tree.

And get this, there are even two aquatic genera.

Really?

Fungi and water?

Yep.

Neva brisa grows on driftwood in the sea.

Its spores have these radiating arms, like little anchors or floats, adapted for water.

Wow.

And then there's Limnopurbin, forming tiny floating fruit bodies in freshwater swamps.

Talk about adapting.

So despite being this unnatural assemblage, defined by what they lack, their often weird and wonderful shapes have definitely caught the eye of mycologists for ages.

They just look different.

And this leads us to, well, one of the most intriguing evolutionary puzzles in mycology.

Theoretically, for a gastromycete to evolve from a hymenomycete ancestor,

those typical mushrooms that do shoot their spores out, only two major shifts are really needed.

Just two.

Yeah.

The fruit body needs to become enclosed, basically stay shut, and it needs to lose that active spore discharge mechanism.

Simpler than you might think, evolutionarily speaking.

And we actually see evidence of this, like transitional form.

We do.

In what are called saccotioid fruit bodies.

Imagine a mushroom where the cap just fails to open up properly and pull away from the stalk.

Huh.

Like a mushroom that stayed closed.

Exactly.

You can even see this pop up sometimes as in weird development in familiar mushrooms, like psilocybe moderia.

And there's even a known gene mutation in lentinus tigranus that naturally turns its normal mushroom shape into one of these saccotioid forms.

Wow.

So it can happen just like that.

And what's truly fascinating here is that molecular studies, you know, DNA work, show that several of these saccotioid species are incredibly closely related to their regular mushroom cousins.

Like who?

Well, Montana and Potaxas, for instance, they're practically siblings with the common shaggy ink cap, Caprinus comatis.

No way.

Yeah.

And Gastrocilis is super close to Sulis.

This strongly suggests that this process, let's call it gastromycetation.

Catchy.

This move towards the gastromycete form isn't just some ancient history.

It might actually be happening now.

Ongoing evolution.

Potentially.

There's even a theory, maybe a bit speculative, that Gastrocilis lorocinus might have evolved from Sulis grevili as recently as like 70 years ago.

70 years.

That's nothing in evolutionary time.

But hang on.

Aren't there really old gastromycete fossils?

There are.

That's the other side of the coin.

The oldest one found so far looks a lot like a modern geostrum, an earth star, and it dates back to the Cretaceous period.

So 65, 70 million years ago.

Yep.

So we have this mix of potentially very recent evolution and genuinely ancient lineages.

It's complex.

What would drive the shift towards staying closed?

Well, one key environmental pressure seems to be drought.

That active spore discharge, the ballista spore mechanism, it relies on precise humidity and water droplets.

Right.

The drop fusion thing.

Exactly.

It just doesn't work well when it's really dry.

So it's probably no coincidence that these saccochoid fungi are quite common in arid and semi -arid regions.

They found a workaround for dry conditions.

Okay.

That makes sense.

But you said it wasn't just one neat evolutionary line.

Yes.

And here's where it gets really interesting, scientifically speaking.

It turns out these stomach fungi, the gastromycetes, they haven't just evolved once.

They've evolved independently multiple times from different mushroom ancestors.

So different groups stumbled onto the same idea.

Precisely.

It's a classic case of convergent evolution.

Different lineages facing similar pressures arrive at similar solutions.

Give me an example.

Okay.

The true earth stars, geostrum, they evolved completely separately from the barometer earth star, Astraeus, even though they look quite similar superficially.

And that clever raindrop bellows mechanism for puffing out spores.

Yeah.

The puffball thing.

It seems to have evolved at least three separate times in different groups.

And things like those little spore packets, the peridules you find in birds' nests, fungi, and spherobolus, and pus solathus.

They look similar, serve a similar function, but they're analogous, not homologous, meaning they have different evolutionary origins that are not derived from the same ancestral structure.

Wow.

So morphology, just looking at them, can be really misleading.

Absolutely.

As one mycologist, Rain Tinders, put it back in 2000, reflecting on these molecular findings,

something like,

morphologists must be ashamed of their wrong conclusion.

It powerfully shows how looks can deceive in biology.

So gastromycetes are better understood not as a single evolutionary branch, but as a biological group, fungi, that lost active spore discharge, and then basically launched into this remarkable series of experiments in spore liberation.

Nature trying out different solutions.

Persistent innovators, indeed.

Okay, so these evolutionary experiments lead us to the major groups we're going to talk about.

Exactly.

We can roughly group them based on their deeper evolutionary relationships revealed by molecular data.

We'll look at the Eugaryx clade, the Bolitoid clade, and the gonfoid phalloid clade.

Right.

Let's dive into the first one, the Eugaryx clade.

This includes some pretty familiar faces, right?

Puffballs and birds' nest fungi.

That's the one.

So let's start with the Lycopradesci, the puffballs.

Most people have probably seen these.

Thin -walled things growing above ground.

When they mature, some, like Lycopraden, get that little hole at the top, the apical pore.

Others, like the giant ones, Calvasia, they just sort of fall apart from the top down.

That's a good description.

And the spores inside are usually brown, often with wartier, spiny textures.

Most are Cypertrophic, doing that decomposition job.

So Lycopraden pyreform is a good example, the pear -shaped one.

A classic example, yeah.

Often found growing right on rotting wood, if you were to slice a young one open, you'd see a two -layered outer wall, the peridium.

Inside, there's often a sterile base, the subglaeba, that doesn't make spores.

And then the upper part, the glabopropa, is like a sponge, filled with small cavities lined with the spore -producing Bicidia.

As it matures, some tissue breaks down, but these tough little threads, called the capillitium, remain.

Ah, the capillitium.

Yeah, they form a sort of network, holding the dry, powdery spores until they're ready to be puffed out.

Which brings us to that ingenious bellows mechanism.

How does that work again?

It's quite neat.

In Lycopraden, the upper layer of that inner peridium wall is elastic.

When a raindrop hits it, thwack.

Right.

It compresses the puff ball slightly, forcing a small cloud of spores out through that apical pore, like a tiny bellows, using the raindrop's energy.

Perfectly timed for dispersal when there's moisture.

Clever.

Now, Calvetia.

The giants.

Yes, Calvetia gigante can be enormous, rugby ball size easily.

Really?

And the spore production is just staggering.

Oh, stagger.

Get this.

A single large fruit body could produce something like seven trillion spores.

That's seven by thousand twelve.

Seven trillion!

That's astronomical!

It really is.

And unlike Lycopraden, Calvetia doesn't bother with a neat pore.

The whole outer skin just eventually breaks apart, releasing that massive cloud of spores.

Do all those spores actually germinate?

Well, that's the thing.

In lab conditions, germination rates are often incredibly low, sometimes less than one percent.

But there's evidence that certain yeasts, naturally present, can significantly stimulate germination.

Nature always has a few tricks up its sleeve.

OK, moving on within the Eugaryx clade.

The Nigylariaceae.

The bird's nest fungi.

These are really distinctive.

They are quite charming, aren't they?

These little funnel -shaped or cup -shaped gastrocarbs.

And the eggs inside.

Those are the peridials.

They're essentially lens -shaped packages containing the spores.

The entire glubba is divided up into these neat little units.

Common genera you might see are sciathus and crucibulum.

And they're decomposers, too.

Yes, saprotrophic, often found on wood chips, twigs, sometimes dung.

And they're quite capable lignintegrators, breaking down tough woody material.

So let's take sciathus olla.

How does it develop?

OK, they usually start from these brown mycelial cords in the substrate.

The young fruit body, the cup, is initially sealed by a thin papery lid called the epiphram.

Like a little drum skin?

Kind of, yeah.

Yeah.

That ruptures as it matures, revealing the peridials inside.

In sciathus, these eggs are typically slate blue or grayish, and are attached to the inner wall of the cup by a really complex little tether called a funiculus.

A funiculus.

Sounds intricate.

Oh, it is.

It's a tiny marvel of biological engineering.

And this leads to their dispersal method, the splash cup mechanism.

This sounds cool.

It really is.

It relies entirely on the impact of raindrops.

A raindrop, and it needs to be a decent size, maybe up to four millimeter.

OK.

Falling directly into the cup creates a strong upward splash or jet of water.

This force is precisely what's needed to interact with that funiculus.

How so?

The force tears open a specific part of the funiculus called the purse.

The purse?

Yeah.

Inside the purse is this tightly coiled thread, the funicular cord.

When the post tears, this cord absorbs water rapidly and swells explosively.

Explos - Well, yeah, it extends dramatically.

Inside the striatus, it can go from maybe two, three millimeters coiled up to four, even 12 centimeters long in an instant.

Wow, like a tiny grappling hook firing off.

Exactly like that.

This rabid extension flicks the attached periole clear out of the cup.

And the very tip of the funicular cord has this sticky pad, the hapturon.

Sticky.

Yep.

As the periole flies through the air, the sticky hapturon often makes contact with nearby vegetation, and the trailing cord can even wrap around a stem, anchoring it there.

Incredible.

So the spores are then dispersed from that little package later on?

Presumably, yeah.

Or perhaps eaten.

Especially for a species like Sciathus stercorius, which grows on dung.

Its spores are stimulated to germinate around 37 degrees C.

Body temperature.

Suggesting they might be adapted to pass through the gut of an animal that eats the vegetation it's stuck to.

Crucibulum, another common genus, has a slightly different, simpler funiculus, but the splash cup idea is the same.

Amazing mechanisms.

Okay, let's pivot now to the second major group, the bullitoid clade.

Right.

Now, this is fascinating because, as the name suggests, the gastromycetes in this group have evolved from ancestors related to bulletes, those fleshy, poured mushrooms.

Like bulletus or swelus?

Exactly.

And it seems this happened on several separate occasions.

The really crucial thing about these gastromycetes is that they are predominantly ectomycorrhizal.

Forming those essential partnerships with trees again?

Yes.

And they are particularly effective partners.

They often develop a very large fungal biomass underground, and importantly these extensive mycelial cords or rhizomorphs.

The fungal highways.

Which can stretch for meters.

They allow the fungus to explore a huge volume of soil, efficiently scavenging for nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, and crucially improving the water supply to the host tree, especially in dry conditions.

How do they move things so far?

There's evidence for long -distance transport within these rhizomorphs via specialized structures called tubular vacuoles.

Think of them as tiny internal pipelines carrying nutrients and water.

And they share other traits with their bullete relatives.

They do.

Chemically, they often contain the same types of distinctive pigments, pulvinic acid derivatives that you find in bulletus and swelus.

Interesting.

And here's a quirky detail.

They're often susceptible to the same fungal parasite, a mold called Epiocria chrysisperma that also attacks bulletes.

Huh.

So the parasite knows who its relatives are.

It almost seems that way.

As one researcher quipped, pathogens may be competent taxonomists.

Okay, so within this bulletoid clade, who do we find?

Let's start with the sclerodermataceae.

That includes earth balls.

Earth balls, yes.

Scleroderma.

And also Pistolithus, which sometimes gets called the die ball.

Die ball.

Why?

Because the immature fruit bodies of Pistolithus tincturius, when you cut or injure them, they exude this really intense blackish or yellowish dye.

Huh.

Useful.

Historically, maybe.

Its appearance is super variable, which made classifying it tricky for a long time.

We now know it's actually a complex of over 10 distinct species.

It's found globally, often spread by humans with forestry trees like Eucalyptus and Acacia, but there's also good evidence for natural long -distance dispersal by airborne spores.

And Pistolithus is important ecologically.

Hugely important.

It's famous for thriving in really extreme environments, very dry, sandy soils, mine spoils, areas with heavy metal contamination.

Wow.

Tough fungus.

Very.

And in these tough spots, its mycorrhizal association is critical for trees.

It significantly boosts their nutrient and water uptake, helps detoxify heavy metals, and can even protect roots from soil pathogens.

So it's used in forestry.

Absolutely.

It's widely used to inoculate tree seedlings, especially for reforestation and land reclamation projects, to give them a better chance of survival.

How does it actually form that connection with the root?

It's a neat stepwise process.

The fungal hyphae sense chemicals from the root tip and grow towards a chemotropism.

They secrete sticky glycoproteins to attach, then gently infect the outer root cap cells.

Within about 48 hours, they form a dense fungal sheath, the mantle, around the root tip.

Then specialized hyphae penetrate between the root cells, forming the heartignet.

That's the crucial interface for nutrient exchange between fungus and tree.

And they form big underground networks.

Yes, individual genetic colonies, or genets, can be very large, covering many square meters.

Their success in dry places is helped by those extensive rhizomorphs, and also by forming sclerotia.

These are dense, hardened masses of mycelium that act like survival structures, allowing the fungus to wait out harsh conditions like drought or fire, like tiny fungal bunkers.

It's passive.

The spores are formed inside numerous small, pea -like packets, peridials, within the gastrocarp.

As the outer wall breaks down, these peridials just disintegrate, releasing the spores.

Okay.

And scleroderma, the earth balls, how are they different?

You often find scleroderma in acidic woodlands, also forming ectomycorrhizae, with trees like pine, birch, oak.

Morphologically, they have a single, thick, tough outer wall, the peridium.

Unlike pisolithus or puffballs, they lack any internal column or capillition threads.

Simpler inside.

The spores are sessile, just sitting on the basidia.

And dispersal is entirely passive.

The tough gastrocarp eventually just cracks open irregularly.

No fancy mechanisms here, just weathering and decay.

Right.

Still in the bolitoid clade, what about the Rhizopogonaceae, beard truffles?

Beard truffles, yes.

The main player here is Rhizopogon.

These are primarily mycorrhizal with coniferous trees, particularly pines and douglas fir.

And they grow underground, like true truffles.

Yes.

The gastrocarp are typically hypogeous, meaning they fruit underground or partially buried.

So how do their spores get out?

Well, what's fascinating here is their main dispersal strategy often involves animals.

Eaten.

Exactly.

Small burrowing mammals like voles, squirrels, chipmunks, find these underground fruit bodies, presumably by scent, and eat them.

The basidia spores pass right through their digestive tracts, unharmed.

So the animals spread the fungus.

Precisely.

It's a very effective dispersal vector.

Just like Poetholithus, Rhizopogon species provide significant benefits to their host trees, nutrients, water, and they're also investigated and sometimes used for forestry inoculation.

Fungi are really resourceful in finding ways to spread.

They really are.

Okay, final group.

The Gomphoid phalloid clade.

You said this one has some spectacular dispersal methods.

Oh, definitely.

This clade arguably contains the fungi, with the most bizarre and showy spore dispersal strategies among all the gastromyces.

Let's hear it.

First up, Geostraci, the earth stars.

Earth stars.

A common example is Geostrum triplex.

When it's young, it looks kind of like a small onion buried in the leaf litter.

Okay.

But as it matures, that outer layer, the exoporidium, splits open radially, forming these triangular rays.

These rays then bend backwards and downwards, actually lifting the inner spore -containing sac up off the ground.

Like it's presenting it on a little stand.

Exactly.

It's quite dramatic.

And how do the spores get out of that inner sac?

It's that bellows mechanism again.

Just like Lycoprudent.

Raindrops hitting the thin papery inoporidium puff the spores out through a pore at the top.

But they're not closely related to Lycoprudent.

Not closely at all.

It's another fantastic example of convergent evolution.

Different lineages arriving at the same elegant solution for raindrop dispersal.

Okay.

Earth stars.

Cool.

Next.

Spherobolus, the cannonball fungus.

Ah, yes.

The cannonball fungus.

This one is truly unique among the gastromyceous we've discussed, because it has actually re -evolved an active discharge mechanism.

It shoots its spores after its ancestors lost the ability.

Kind of, yes.

It essentially reversed that key evolutionary step.

It decided, you know what?

Firing spores is actually a good idea.

How does it work?

Okay.

Spherobolus tilatus makes these tiny globos, usually bright orange gastrocarp, only about two millimeters across.

You find them on rotting wood, dung, old sacking sometimes.

Tiny things?

Very small.

When it's ripe, the outer layers peel back, forming two nested star -shaped cups.

Sitting inside the inner cup is a single, dark brown, lens -shaped pyridiole, about a millimeter across.

That's the cannonball.

Okay, the stage is set.

And this is where it becomes mind -bending.

The inner cup suddenly and violently turns itself inside out.

It averts.

Flips inside out.

Yeah.

And this incredibly rapid aversion projects that single pyridiole with considerable force, and for surprising distances.

How far are we talking?

Vertically, it can shoot over two meters straight up.

Horizontally, over four meters is common, and the documented record is an astonishing 5 .7 meters.

From a two millimeter fungus?

That's incredible, like a tiny artillery piece.

It really is.

The physiological mechanism is pretty neat, too.

How does it build up that pressure?

Cells in a special palisade layer within that inner cup accumulate sugars, mainly glucose.

This ramps up their internal osmotic pressure, causing them to swell massively, with water increasing turgor.

This swelling creates enormous strain because it's constrained by other, less elastic layers.

Eventually, the strain becomes too great, and it's released explosively by the sudden aversion of the cup, launching the pyridiole.

Is it triggered by anything?

Light is actually necessary for the final stages of maturation and the buildup of pressure, and the opening itself is isotropic.

It aims towards the light source, which makes sense for dispersal.

It often follows a daily rhythm, firing in the morning light.

Amazing.

What happens to the pyridiole after it's launched?

Once launched, that little cannonball is covered in a dark, sticky substance.

So it adheres readily to whatever surface it hits.

Leaves, stems, maybe even a passing insect.

And it's tough.

Incredibly resilient.

The spores inside can remain viable for several years.

And, like the bird's nest fungi, there's a suggestion that animals eating vegetation with pyridials stuck to them could also play a role in dispersal, especially explaining why you find it on dung.

Wow.

Okay, active discharge is back.

Now, the last one.

Phalacea.

Stinkhorns.

These sound pleasant.

Well, their solution to spore dispersal is certainly original.

They essentially decided, forget launching, let's attract insects.

Specifically, flies that are normally drawn to decaying flesh.

They smell bad.

Notoriously so.

Many produce really strong cadaverous odors, compounds like methylmercaptan, hydrogen sulfide, dimethyltrisulfide.

Classic rotting smell.

Yuck.

But some also use bright colors as attractants, like the vivid red of clathrous ruber, which comes from carotenoid pigments.

Interestingly, there seems to be a trade -off.

The really brightly colored ones tend to be less overpoweringly stinky.

Smart.

So, the common stinkhorn, phallus imputicus.

A classic example.

You often smell it before you see it.

They start underground as these whitish gelatinous structures called eggs, the primordia, developing from extensive mycelial cords.

Thick eggs.

Then, the fruit body expands incredibly rapidly.

It can go from maybe 5 centimeters tall to 15 centimeters or even more in just a matter of hours.

How does it grow so fast?

It's mostly water uptake.

There's a thick jelly -like layer in the peridium of the egg that stores a lot of water, and rapid cell expansion pushes the stalk or receptacle upwards very quickly.

And then the smell kicks in.

As it expands, the spore mass, the gleba, which is this dark green slimy liquid goo covering the cap, is exposed.

This gleba releases those potent volatile chemicals that attract flies, especially blowflies and blue bottles.

And the flies eat the slime?

They do.

The gleba mats isn't just smelly.

It also contains sugars and even some sweet -smelling compounds, like phenylacetaldehyde to encourage feeding.

The flies lap up the slime, ingesting millions of spores.

And then they fly off and defecate the spores elsewhere, unharmed.

It's actually a very efficient dispersal method.

Studies have counted huge numbers of viable spores and fly guts, up to 1 .7 million in some larger flies.

Gross.

But effective.

Any other uses for these things?

Surprisingly,

yes.

There's a fascinating real -world application.

Certain species with delicate net -like veils, like Phallus enthusiatus and P.

duplicatus.

Veils stinkhorns.

Exactly.

They are considered a culinary specialty, particularly in China.

Known sometimes as the queen of mushrooms, they're often sold dried, or the unopened eggs are collected and boiled before they, well, get too stinky.

Eating stinkhorn eggs?

Okay, that's unexpected.

Nature is full of surprises.

And beyond Phallus, you have other interesting genera, like mutinous, the dog's stinkhorn, which is often smaller, maybe slightly less pungent.

And clathrous, which forms these amazing lattice -like or cage -like food bodies, often bright red, including the rather alien -looking squid fungus, clathrous archery, which is spread to new areas.

Each one is a unique take on insect attraction.

Well, that was quite the journey into the gastromycetes.

Seriously, from the simple bellows of the puffball to the, wow, cannonball fungus and the insect -luring stinkhorn, it's just clear these fungi found incredibly diverse, sometimes spectacular ways to spread their spores, even after giving up that initial explosive launch.

Indeed.

And what's truly fascinating, I think, is how these varied solutions popped up independently, again and again, in different lineages.

It's such a powerful lesson in convergent evolution, isn't it?

Yeah.

Just nature's sheer persistence and ingenuity.

Yeah.

They really underline that even losing something, like that active spore discharge, isn't necessarily an endpoint.

It can actually open the door to a whole spectacular array of new adaptations.

So what does this all mean for you, our curious listener?

Maybe it's a reminder that sometimes, you know, the most unexpected paths, the ones that seem like a step back, can actually lead to the most surprising innovations, whether it's a tiny cannonball or just a really bad smell.

Life finds a way, right?

Keep an eye out for these incredible fungi on your next walk.

You might just spot one of these hidden geniuses of the fungal world performing its own unique evolutionary experiment.

For the deep dive and from the last -minute lecture team, thank you so much for joining us on this fascinating exploration.