I study unusual species which show extreme evolution. In graduate school I studied a yeast that forms a spore outside the cell. My major professor suggested that I do time-lapse photographs to look for evidence of why the spore was not formed inside the cell as usually occurs for yeasts. I shot a few frames; but the yeast wasn't responding to sporulation conditions as it should. So I studied the nutrition, respiration and sporulation requirements. The result showed endotrophic sporulation as the reason for the unusual structure.

Endotrophism means nutrition from within. The spore was forming without external nutrients being available. As the cell mass got used up, it shrunk in size. Since yeasts have hard cell walls, the cell mass had to move into a smaller chamber to form the spore.

Physiology is the integration of biochemical processes. More then one process needs to be studied at a time to produce measured evidence of the relationships. Otherwise, guessing at relationships between processes is needed.

The demands of directly studying the complexities of microbial physiology are generally impossible to meet now days. One of the problems is that the complexity of studying more than one process at a time overwhelms university scientists.

Another problem is that timed measurements are needed for the physiology of microbes due to rapidly changing states. Single points are not definable. Usually, three days of continuous measurements at four or eight hour intervals are needed for bacteria and yeasts, which is usually impossible to do.

I was living a block from the laboratory and had nothing better to do for one year, but the demands were taxing. The more complex physiological work gets, the more efficient it is in terms of results. It is not easy to start and stop procedures or study complexities in simplified ways.

I study what others are not studying, which is where the demands are greatest. It is also where the most unusual phenomena exist and where most significant information can be found.

The yeast results showed the basic physiology of mushroom formation; so I moved onto the vacated farm where my grandparents used to live in South Dakota and did mushroom research. I studied the morel mushroom, since its unusual characteristics were totally baffling to mushroom scientists.

The morel forms spores inside of the tissue instead of on micro stalks as other mushrooms usually do. So the morel does not have gills, which are designed for wind sweeping spores out, and it is shaped like a hollow bulb. The consequence for the morel is very problematic spore dissemination.

What I found is that the morel mushroom has yeast physiology, which is very problematic. That means the morel excretes acid to kill bacteria in the soil and feed on them. Under laboratory conditions, the acid accumulates on the mycelium inhibiting growth. In the wild, the mycelium spreads out diluting the acid. Typically, a patch of morel mycelium will be up to eight feet across and only produce one mushroom or cluster.

To survive through summer heat and winter cold, morel mycelium forms underground clumps of cells called sclerotia. The sclerotia grows out as mycelium under humid conditions and then reforms sclerotial clumps under harsh conditions.

The morel produces an informative anomaly as flat tissue including pigments on the surface of liquid and gel nutrients. That means it was growing flat on a surface in its recent history. A filamentous yeast was growing at the base of trees and reached into the soil to feed on bacteria.

Optimal nutrition is needed to produce the anomaly. Mushroom scientists do not know how to optimize nutrition, so they are not aware of the morel anomaly.

The morel evolves in front of an ice sheet during each ice age cycle. That's because a filamentous yeast growing at the base of trees needed cool and humid conditions, because yeasts do not tolerate dehydration. Cold fog sweeping down the ice sheet and following the ground topology allowed the yeast to survive on tree trunks and extend into the ground, while up higher, the leaves of the tree would get sunlight.

There are two cup fungi that evolved during the previous two ice age cycles. Those cup fungi have spore surface characteristics that identify them as the same origins as morels. The cup shape is needed for survival, because getting spores out requires three days of humid conditions while spores form and then dry conditions which cause the tissue to shrink and create a force propelling the spores out. A cup shape has varied degrees of dryness between the wet, cold ground and the outer rim. So conditions are apt to be favorable somewhere in between.

During the start of morel evolution, the bulb shape is sufficient, because early, spring soil is loaded with bacteria to feed upon. A lot of sclerotial mass can be produced for building the size of the mycelial mass for about three years before the mushroom forms. But under harsher conditions, the cup shape is needed for improved survivability.

A variant called Helvela crispa grows later in the season when conditions get hotter and dryer and bacterial nutrients are not as available. It looks like a potato chip on a stalk. It's a primitive form of the cup shape which meets more demanding conditions than the bulb shape does.

The morel would have emerged from the soil as a mushroom about 20 thousand years ago. Ice ages have been cycling at 100 thousand year intervals. The morel process would have started about 50 thousand years ago; and more than half of that time would have been taken up by preliminary evolution.

I know of no other multicellular organism that evolved from a single-celled organism within the past 200 million years. It means the morel is extremely informative of the evolution of differentiation.

One important point demonstrated by the morel is that morphology (shape) evolves very easily, while physiology does not. Morphological change requires nothing more than counting cells in each direction. Physiology is highly resistant to change, because cells are like ten thousand assembly lines packed together; and any change in arrangement would cause metabolites to diffuse away and disrupt processes.

Where conditions are harsh, the morel shows visible differences every hundred miles of ground space. The rapid changes in morphology often result in tissue hanging off the side.

Phenotypic Variation

Both yeasts and morel mushrooms depend heavily upon phenotypic variation to cope with difficulties in getting spores disseminated. Phenotypic variation means different expressions for the same genetic make-up similar to tissue differences in animals but for individual organisms. The morel shows that effect dramatically under the harsh conditions of the upper plains in the U.S. When conditions are more mild, there is less phenotypic variation.

Phenotypic variation is universal for all species but more visible under harsh conditions than mild conditions. The house flowers evolved under ideal conditions, such as central china, and show very little phenotypic variation.

Scientists do not understand the role of phenotypic variation as an adaptation mechanism; so they tried to use different labels for morel variants, which resulted in a lot of confusion.

Morel scientists found three to five variants for each enzyme of the TCA system but didn't know why. Considering the degree of variation for a wide variety of properties including pigments, there would not be any two morel mushrooms (or clusters) exactly the same. The morel has not had time to sort out its phenotypes; so ninety percent of the morels do not produce viable spores—that is, under the harsh conditions of the upper plains.

At the other extreme is the puffball, which has been around for 300 million years. It evolved with conifers on the hills taking form on Pangea. The puffball (the mainline type) produces four phenotypes in sequence a few weeks apart. The mycelium of the puffball stays underground, spreading through hard clay, and emerges about once every ten years. It does that to prevent insects and disease from evolving against it.

(The common mushroom, as Agaricus campestris, requires its spores to be carried by wind into the upper atmosphere before the spores can germinate as a method of widely scattering the mushrooms and preventing disease and insects from evolving against it. Of course, mushroom scientists at the universities don't know such things, not studying physiology significantly.)

One of the noticeable phenotypes for humans is variations in muscle cells. Some persons have fast muscle cells, and some slow. The differences do not follow parent-to-offspring (Mendelian) inheritance but are scrambled for each offspring. Random distribution through a population is a characteristic of phenotypic variation.

Mushroom scientists claim the morel is an ancient cup fungus with an evolutionary age of 129 million years—older than most dinosaurs. Being clueless on physiology, they get a lot wrong. Mushroom scientists don't study physiology, because they are located in botany departments and cut off from microbial physiology. The physiology of filamentous fungi is not significantly studied, because those fungi cannot be studied in liquids as bacteria and yeasts can.

A large part of evolution biology is in error. There tends to be a perspective problem in evolution science due to a lack of experience in outdoor environments. For example, assuming that soil was created by acids breaking down rocks is disgraceful. Acids do not convert minerals into semisolids. If acids dissolve minerals, the ions wash into the streams and oceans.

An agriculture background includes a study of soil. All terrestrial biology and evolution comes out of the soil. So it appears almost essential for a lot of evolution biologists to have an agriculture background, but they usually don't.

For example, the morel mushroom will grow on nothing but sandy soil or an equivalent such as some types of mountain humus, because it will not tolerate dehydration, and sandy soil does not easily dry out due to a lack of capillary action. Morel scientists never noticed, while they claim a leaf mold (Costantinella cristata) is a conidial stage of the morel. The morel cannot grow on dead leaves because of the dryness, and morels are not decay organisms as leaf molds must be.

Scientists do not have a clear concept of what happened when dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. There was a dramatic transition between primitive biology and modern biology at that time. Knowing how dinosaurs died out tells a lot about the subject.

I worked in the rock quarries in Oregon during the summers while in college and spent a lot of time tromping through the old-growth forests before they were mowed down. The old-growth forests were very complex showing relationships between species. One of the things that was apparent was the reason why dinosaurs got large. It would have taken a lot of power to tromp through the nonwoody brush which dinosaurs ate and which would have covered the lowlands at that time.

Scientists produce a lot of theories for dinosaurs getting large which do not take into account the environment, because they don't know that the lowlands were covered with the nonwoody brush that dinosaurs ate. Artists show dinosaurs standing in grassy meadows looking up at scattered trees, which is nothing resembling the ecology that dinosaurs would have lived in.

The possible explanations for dinosaurs getting large listed on Wikipedia are, protection from predators, reduction of energy use, longevity or more effective digestion. Such explanations would apply to all animals rather than the environment being the cause. What is being missed in those explanations is that it is always environmental influences that shape evolution.

Before dinosaurs died out grass was gradually overtaking the nonwoody brush. The asteroid strike completed the process very rapidly allowing grass to shape modern biology.

Differentiation Of Fungi

My research on yeast sporulation showed the basic physiology of differentiation for all fungi including yeasts, molds and mushrooms. I could not mention other species in publishing the results, as publications in those days allowed only a presentation of data. The prevalence of the basic differentiation mechanism is highly visible in a wide variety of fungi.

This physiology shows that a peak in the ATP level triggers the process of differentiation, which means spore formation for yeasts and molds and sporocarp formation for mushrooms. The ATP level can only reach the necessary peak when cell mass is large enough, cell machinery is functioning and nutrient sources are adequate. Then adaptation to environmental conditions can occur, such as rain causing mushrooms to form, since a lot of moisture is needed for a mushroom to emerge.

The growing procedure for common mushrooms shows how the mechanism works. After the mycelium is grown on compost for about two months, a casing layer consisting of peat moss and chalk is layered over the top. The mycelium grows slowly through the casing, and when it gets to the surface, a mushroom forms. The difference between growing through the casing and getting to the surface is the availability of oxygen on the surface. Oxygen converts an energy storage molecule (NADH) into ATP. Prior growth determines whether there is enough energy built up in the NADH precursors. In nature, rain seals out oxygen, just as a casing layer does, causing the precursor to build up instead of being used for growth.

Of course, this sort of work is supposed to be left to authorities who have suitable credentials. University scientists are looking for a substance that causes a mushroom to form. During the 80s and 90s, they thought it might be acetylene, which someone found in mushroom casing. Having given up on acetylene, they are now looking for a bacterium. It's as intelligent as looking for a substance that causes a tree to form. If something in the casing caused the mushroom to form, the mushroom would form in the casing layer instead of on the surface. That's too much physiology for mushroom scientists.

The question of yeast differentiation took form during the early 1950s. Yeast scientists knew something was triggering sporulation of yeasts, but they couldn't determine what it was. A. F. Croes, in the Netherlands, looked at the physiology and theorized that a peak in energy metabolism was triggering sporulation. I found measured evidence in nitrogen metabolism. Depletion of nitrogen causes a build-up of ATP, because ATP can't be used for synthesis without nitrogen, while ATP can still be produced without nitrogen availability. The resulting energy peak promotes sporulation.

It is now apparent that an energy peak is the basic trigger mechanism for spore formation used by all fungi and yeasts, and it explains how mushrooms form. But a second mechanism is also required for most types of mushroom formation, and it too is found in the yeast, Nadsonia fulvescens. It is the production of spores without nutrients available, called endotrophism. Endo means "within the cells," and trophism means nutrition. It is nutrition from within.

This yeast stores up energy and cell material and then transfers that material into an adjacent chamber where the spore forms. Sporulation is inhibited by a repressor substance, acetate, which is a product of metabolism. These strange characteristics result from adaptation to growing on tree sap. Most yeasts grow well on tree sap, but they can't adapt to it when it is transitory.

Nadsonia adapted by forming a spore when rain washes the tree exudate away. The yeast maximizes growth by not allowing spores to form while nutrients are available. Forming the spore from previously stored-up material results in a shrinkage of cell mass. Since yeasts have hard cell walls, the material must move into a smaller chamber to accommodate the reduction in size.

Only Nadsonia shows the migration of cell material into an adjacent chamber, which indicates that it is the only yeast which forms a spore when nutrients are not available. Whether other yeasts have adapted to tree sap that is more permanent has not been determine, because endotrophism would not be required under those conditions.

Mushrooms which grow in the ground (but not wood growing mushrooms) are usually endotrophic. They build up a mass of mycelium for several months and then channel the cell material into a mushroom in one or two days. The high speed process of forming a mushroom is necessary to prevent drying of tissue or damage before spores are released. Modern mushrooms including the morel do not tolerate drying, so they have to form spores rapidly. Two ancient mushrooms, the puffball and the bolete, are resistant to drying, and they form quite slowly.

The morel evolved from a yeast so recently that it does not have good control over morphology and has not yet evolved detection of gravity for vertical growth, as almost everything which emerges from the soil has. It also self-destructs as it dies off, as all bacteria and yeasts do, but which mushrooms never do. The process is called autolysis. It allows nutrients to be recycled by breaking large molecules into subunits for re-use as nutrients.

History

In college, I studied agriculture and microbiology getting a masters degree in microbiology in 1970 at the University of Arizona and starting Ph.D. studies at the University of California at Davis but was driven out by mental pain after taking courses there for a year. Mental pain is caused by memories of pain too close to the surface and contacted by distracting environments. The mental pain began before completing my masters work; but I didn't know what it was or how long it would last; so I started PhD studies anyway.

Because of the mental pain, which goes away in a quiet environment, I moved onto the vacated farm where my grandparents used to live in South Dakota and did mushroom research. I soon found endless errors in physics including an incorrect equation for defining kinetic energy based on a fraudulent measurement by James Joule in 1845. So I added criticism of science errors to my research.

I stumbled onto the misdefinition of energy in physics in 1983. It means the equation for representing kinetic energy is wrong. It has velocity squared within it ( KE=½mv² ), while nothing can move at velocity squared. I developed a simple and unquestionable mathematical proof of the error and conducted physics experiments on the subject. About ninety percent of physics is corrupted by the error. Everything else in physics besides Newton's laws is corrupted by the resulting shift in standards for contriving instead of measuring.

Physicists have been redefining science to remove it from the rationality that proves them wrong and converting it into religion, where the test of truth is power and status. Worship replaces measurements, because there is no criticism where there is worship.

Not having a PhD degree is a good thing, not a bad thing, for what I do, because it allows me to focus on science and relevance. Scientists at the universities study by looking through a straw, because technicalities are extreme and grant-financed research is narrowly prescribed with nonscience activity taking up a large part of scientists' time.

Being independent allows me to focus on errors and serious criticism, which is not allowed within the science power structure. Only retired scientists do serious science criticism; and they never get far, because the media allows no serious criticism of science.

Actually, I have more education than PhDs usually do, studying everything relevant at three universities for eight years and publishing independent research, which they seldom do. The difference is that PhDs are not really philosophers but sociologists. They run the world. Disconnecting from that process allows more focus on basic science; and being independent allows a broader range of study, while combining agriculture and microbiology is totally essential for evaluating evolution at the physiological level.

I was not allowed to publish my mushroom research, being an outsider. There are too many errors in science to allow anyone to publish who is not sufficiently controlled to prevent exposure of the errors.

By 1997, I had a large amount of scientific information accumulated and no better place for it than the internet. About then, global warming became a social issue, so I have been developing that subject explaining the science in terms the public can understand. When I could no longer keep a car running, I got on a bus and moved to Seattle. All I do now is maintain the web site.

I avoid social controversies, because corrupters would like nothing more than use them as a distraction from the provable science. They derive a litany of weaponized realities around controversies, which immunizes them to rationality.

You might think some of my material is quite controversial. That's different from developed controversies. It takes corrupters a lot of time to derive opposing realities through trial and error without evaluation.