Think truffles and you’ll probably think of France. But Australia is actually a global hotspot for truffle-like fungi, boasting hundreds of different species. Like culinary truffles, these truffle-like fungi produce underground sporing bodies rather than send up mushrooms.
Living underground has its challenges. Fungi which form mushrooms above ground can easily disperse their spores (the fungal equivalent to a plant’s seed) on the wind. But truffle-like fungi can’t do this. Instead, they rely on native mammals to follow their pungent smells, dig up the underground sporing body, eat it and disperse their spores in their scat.
Many native mammals eat fungi when they are easily available, including common brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula), swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor), bush rats (Rattus fuscipes), and greater bilbies (Macrotis lagotis), but they generally don’t rely on them for a large part of their diet in the same way as potoroos and bettongs do. Among these fungi fans, there’s one species which stands out.
