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Cladonia prostrata

Resurrection lichen, dune cup lichen

Lichens are poikilohydric organisms, meaning that they cannot control how much water they take in or lose. When their environment is wet, they are wet. When their environment is dry, they are dry. Obviously water is necessary for photosynthesis, so lichens have a diversity of strategies to deal with this inherent stress, well adapted as they are to their climactic niches. One such strategy is visible here in C. prostrata: when moist, the long, deeply incised lobes unfurl, exposing the green algal photobiont in the upper surface to sunlight for photosynthesis, but when dry, the lobes curl and expose the pale underside, stopping photosynthesis while protecting the photobiont cells from photodamage. It basically allows the whole system to shut down until water is available again. This adaptation makes sense in context this lichen's particular survival strategy. The xeric sand pine scrub forests C. prostrata inhabits in Florida and Georgia are prone to fire, leaving the ground exposed to full sun and prone to drying out. By having a built in resistance to photodamage triggered by water loss, C. prostrata is able to survive in this stressful environment, and is in fact one of the first colonizers following a fire event! It helps to stabilize the soil and recharge it with nutrients, helping the system recover as a whole. Pretty cool, huh?

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Pure mycelium shoe debuts in Milan with a load-bearing fungal sole

A prototype shoe made entirely from pure mycelium, the root-like network of fungi, will debut at Milan Design Week. The project is a collaboration between researcher and designer Lars Dittrich of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and head shoemaker Marie De Ryck at La Monnaie/De Munt. It reframes how living materials enter application, moving beyond substitution toward a model in which design mediates between advanced biomaterials research and the demands of traditional craft. The innovation moves beyond mycelium as a surface material or leather substitute toward its use as a structural component. The pure mycelium sole achieves load-bearing capacity without reinforcement by bonding mycelium sheets into a single, dense construction. The project builds on fungal materials research by the Microbiology Research Group, led by Prof. Eveline Peeters and Prof. Elise Vanden Elsacker. It forms part of the MycoMatters program, which develops pure mycelium materials with the performance and scalability required for real-world applications.

Photomicrographs of plant cross-sections. Formenwelt aus dem Naturreiche. Forms from the Natural World. 1904. Martin Gerlach.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens), taken June 20, 2026, in Georgia, US