The Kingdoms of Nature

This appeared in the February 18 edition of The Fish Wrap.

Humans don’t like taxes but we love taxonomy - a method of classifying the 8.7 million species that live on the earth. They are broken into the 5 kingdoms of nature: Animals and Plants are familiar. The Fungi kingdom includes yeasts, moulds and the mighty mushroom. The first species that we all evolved from was in the Protista kingdom. This diverse kingdom includes kelp, amoeba and algae. The Monera Kingdom, made up of microscopic organisms, is the most mysterious, though they exist in all habitats.

Fungi’s cells are surprisingly similar to animal cells. In fact, fungi split from animals around 1.538 billion years ago, while plants split from animals around 1.547 years ago. Fungi spilt from animals 9 million years after plants did, making mushrooms a closer relative than plants! Unlike plants and like us, fungi feed off of other living things instead of producing their own food as plants do. And when mushrooms are exposed to sunlight, they produce vitamin D, just like us.

Civilization has found some important uses of the fungi yeast, using it to make precious items like bread, beer, wine, cheese and antibiotics. Fungi also plays a crucial role in growing our food by recycling dead organisms and making nutrients available to plants through the soil food web. But with an estimated 1.5 million fungal species, of which only 10% are known and understood, fungi remains a mysterious, untapped resource.

As humans, we love putting things into tidy categories with defined boundaries.  With nature those boundaries are blurred as we learn about the interconnections of all life on our planet.  When we box out one section of nature to our liking, whether with agriculture or our own health, the system goes awry.  Our bodies and our soils can thrive without chemical inputs!