Explore the forms of fungi, from gilled caps and wood-growing fans to microscopic moulds and lichens. Choose a species, then its habitat.
Shift+click to center the view on a substrate region.Grow a mushroom. Keep a favorite. See what comes next.
A tan cap, lilac gills, and a life shared with trees. Plant sugars support the fungus; its hyphae gather mineral nitrogen and return some to the host. The root tips shown in the scene are a representative view of this underground interface.
Ectomycorrhizal hyphae form a mantle around short roots and a Hartig net between root cells. This model tracks carbon and nitrogen exchange, root establishment, fruit development, spore collection and paired cultures. Soil organic matter is not treated as wood food. Agar supports free culture; fruiting here requires an established compatible host. Water activity and humidity are conditions, not water inventories.
Growth rates, carbon costs, one representative mushroom per culture and displayed root anatomy are illustrative. The host is a carbon-supplying root compartment, not a whole-tree growth model. Laccaria has tetrapolar mating: the two partners must differ at A and B. Allele numbers are synthetic markers. The collection abstracts spore germination and pairing in culture; it does not simulate DNA or every step of meiosis. The eight-spore sample spans multiple basidia.
Orange conidia reproduce a lineage asexually. For a sexual cross, grow A and a, lower nitrogen, then give a receptive colony an opposite-type conidium.
An ascus contains eight haploid ascospores: four meiotic products followed by a mitosis. Let collected spores ripen for seven simulated days, then apply an activation cue before germination. Conidia need no activation.
The vegetative mycelium is haploid; A and a are mating types, not sexes. Either can make female protoperithecia and donate conidia. Fertilization leads to dark perithecia with asci. This model tracks mating-type segregation, not DNA or gene maps. Branches, conidia and reproductive structures are representative and enlarged for visibility. Carbon is conserved; rates, carbon costs, spatial competition and nutrient responses are illustrative. Humidity and substrate water activity are declared conditions, not a water-mass model.
The activation action represents treatment of isolated, ripened ascospores; it does not heat the growing colony. Normal laboratory strains commonly need heat activation.
Conidiation and nitrogen induction · Mating types · Asci and meiosis · Ascospore care and activation
Golden shield lichen · Xanthoria parietina. Green algae supply carbon in wet daylight; fungal tissue shelters them. Dry thalli become dormant. Growth unfolds over years.
Place a fragment or fungal spore on the surface.
Fragments carry both partners. Sexual spores carry only the fungus. This species has no soredia or isidia.
Bark and rock supply attachment, not organic carbon. Minerals limit growth; this green-algal partnership does not fix nitrogen. Mechanisms are biologically informed; rates and environmental thresholds are illustrative, not fitted to a strain or habitat.
Hydration and carbon exchange · Lichen reproduction · Species morphology
Saved specimen shapes, fitted to each card. Mass is from recorded fruits, not whole harvests. Choose a strain, then grow it above.
Synthetic strain genetics · inherited tendencies, shaped by growing conditions.
Discover a line to begin your family tree.
Each new line pairs two random founder spores. Discovering another leaves your growing colony untouched. Strains can only be planted in their own species. Replant a saved line to keep its genome.
Plant a line to follow its progress here.
Pairing is a bounded approximation. Accepted crosses appear in the culture bank and grow separately in the main scene; no spatial competition or physical spore mass is simulated.
Compare two to eight cultures using the same inoculation layout and simulator settings. Roles are declared experiment labels; a manually chosen control is not a randomized sibling control. Five replicates per culture at each temperature; 95% RH in both environments.
Choose a selected descendant already in your custom group. The draw excludes recorded selections and included cultures, and saves the eligible candidates. Leave one slot available.
Runs the remaining grow-outs in this main scene, replacing the colony between runs. Stop keeps archived harvests and pauses the current grow-out.
Advance grows the current comparison through the main simulator and archives its next daily harvest. Empty harvests are retained; missed days cannot be filled in afterward.
Each run contributes its mean measured specimen value. Ranges describe recorded run means, not confidence intervals or whole-colony yield. Groups share conditions at measurement; growing history, supply, age, and selection may differ. Distinct seeds alone do not establish independent evaluation.
These are individual harvest checkpoints, not completed trial replicates. Portable replay exports include their source records.