Entangled Life (2020) by Merlin Sheldrake

pp. 8-9 - early medicinal use of fungi - indigenous australia, talmudic judaism, ancient egypt, elizabethan england

p. 14 - "Our perceptions work in large part by expectation. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch."

p. 17 - microbiome, nanobiome, picobiome - "To talk about individuals made no sense anymore. BiologY—the study of living organisms—had transformed into ecology—the study of the relationships between living organisms."

p. 18 - "The 'loss of a sense of self-identity, delusions of self-identity and experience of "alien control,"' observed an elder statesman in the field of microbiome research, are all potential symptoms of mental illness. It made my head spin to think of how many ideas had to be revisited, not least our culturally treasured notions of identity, autonomy, and independence. . . . 'We' are ecosystems that span boundaries and transgress categories. Our selves emerge from a complex tangle of relationships only now becoming known."

pp. 31-32 - truffle fruiting bodies house b/w a million and a billion bacteria per gram of dry weight

pp. 35-37 - fungal hyphae become mycelial network by 1) branching and 2) fusing ("anastomosis"), "Some fungi have tens of thousands of mating types. . . . The mycelium of many fungi can fuse with other mycelial networks if they are genetically similar enough, even if they aren’t sexually compatible. Fungal self-identity matters, but it is not always a binary world. Self can shade off into otherness gradually."

p. 38 - piedmont white truffles, porcini, chanterelle, matsutake, and others have never been domesticated bc of fluidity of relationships w plants and bc of intricacies of their sex lives, "trufficulture is immature"

p. 44 - "fungi actively sense and interpret their worlds, even if we have no way of knowing what it is like for a hypha to sense or interpret"

pp. 48-49 - "Mycelium overproduces links. Some turn out to be more competitive than others. These links are thickened. Less competitive links are withdrawn, leaving a few mainline highways. By growing in one direction while pulling back from another, mycelial networks can even migrate through a landscape. The Latin root of the word extravagant means “to wander outside or beyond.” It is a good word for mycelium, which ceaselessly wanders outside and beyond its limits, none of which are preset as they are in most animal bodies. Mycelium is a body without a body plan."

p. 59 - "the word brain is a distraction," mycelial network can have b/w hundreds and billions of hyphal tips, all integrating and processing information on a massively parallel basis

pp. 60-62 - electrical impulses, "action potentials," realistic way for fungi to send messages b/w different parts of themselves, conveying info about “food sources, injury, local conditions within the fungus, or the presence of other individuals around it"

p. 66 - "intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing the things they need to survive," latin root of intelligence means “to choose between,” “swarm intelligence” describes problem-solving behavior of brainless systems, "behavior of these network-based life-forms can be thought of as arising from 'minimal' or 'basal' cognition. . .  intelligent behaviors can arise without brains. a dynamic and responsive network is all that’s needed."

p. 76 - "panspermia" - can life travel thru space b/w planets/celestial bodies?

p. 79 - capacity of lichens to survive in space, "lichening rod effect describes what happens when lichens strike familiar concepts, splintering them into new forms. The idea of symbiosis is one such example. Survival in space is another, as is the threat that lichens pose to systems of biological classification"

p. 81 - "endosymbiotic theory" - eukaryotes arose “by fusion and merger” - earliest eukaryotic cells analogous to lichens: "innovation emerging from partnership"

pp. 84-85 - lichens are "extremophiles" - survive extreme conditions by entering state of suspended animation, produce more than a thousand chemicals that are not found in any other life-form, ability to survive many different types of extreme qualify them as “polyextremophiles," in swedish lapland the oldest known lichen is >9000 yrs old

pp. 90-91 - "queer theory for lichens" - "lichens are queer beings that present ways for humans to think beyond a rigid binary framework: the identity of lichens is a question rather than an answer known in advance"

p. 92 - "holobiont" - assemblage of different organisms that behaves as a unit

p. 97 - "ergot alkaloids," lsd, zombie fungi

pp. 100-101 - bosch iconography inspired by ergot poisoning, dancing mania of 14-17th centuries, rituals in central america, "flesh of the gods," hundreds of mushroom-shaped statues from 1000-2000 bce

p. 110 - psilocybin reduces "default mode network" brain activity, "ego-dissolution," "unconstrained style of cognition"

pp. 112-113 - mckenna and human-fungi symbiosis

p. 114 - "Analysis of the DNA of psilocybin- producing fungal species reveals that the ability to make psilocybin evolved more than once. More surprising was the finding that the cluster of genes needed to make psilocybin has jumped between fungal lineages by horizontal gene transfer several times over the course of its history. . . . The fact that the psilocybin gene cluster remained in one piece as it moved around suggests that it provided a significant advantage to any fungi who expressed it. If it didn’t, the trait would have quickly degenerated."

p. 127 - plant root systems have their “roots” in mycorrhizal networks, which they collaborated with to exchange nutrients

p. 136 - “reciprocal rewards” promotes best symbiotic pairings b/w plants and fungi, “both partners share control of the exchange”

p. 140 - plants w higher proclivity for fungi partnerships migrate and spread faster

pp. 145-147 - “ecosystem engineers,” broad agricultural applications and possibilities

p. 151 - “common mycorrhizal networks” - fungal networks form physical connections between plants of same and other species, whereby they can share carbon and other nutrients

p. 156 - mycoheterotrophs - plants that depend on fungi for their nutrition

p. 162 - fungi as “brokers of entanglement able to mediate the interactions between plants according to their own fungal needs”

pp. 182-185 - “mycoremediation” - fungi can “learn” to transform (degrade, decompose, digest) human pollutants: cigarette butts, glyphosate, dmmp, pesticides, synthetic dyes, explosives (tnt, rdx), crude oil, plastics, and a range of human and veterinary drugs not removed by wastewater treatment plants, including antibiotics and synthetic hormones

pp. 192-193 - “mycofabrication” - fungi can recompose materials: skin grafts, batteries, bricks, tiles, packaging, furniture - darpa has invested $10 million in this process