Living the Good Life! (Adaptation)

HOW HAS THIS ORGANISM ADAPTED TO ITS HABITAT?
Fungi have had to adapt in many ways because they can't make their own food like plants by photosynthesis or move to acquire food. In order to overcome this, fungi have a structure called hyphae, which they use to break down and absorb nutrients with exoenzymes. Claviceps purpurea is further adapted to live in its habitat because it infiltrates the vascular tissue of its hosts to get its nutrition. By not killing the host, ergot ensures that it will always have a constant food supply another very important adaptation. What a lazy "fun-guy"! Distributing spores is also somewhat of a difficulty when you're immotile, so it produces honeydew to overcome this problem. The honeydew is a sticky substance filled with conidia that can either be splashed to other plants by rain drops or transported by an insect vector. When an insect, like a bumble bee, lands on the plant and then flies to another plant, the spores can be transmitted and another plant can become infected.

HOW DOES ERGOT RESPOND TO ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI?
In my research, I didn't find too many ways that Claviceps purpurea responds to the environment, but I did find that oxygen is very beneficial for mycelium growth. That's about it for this fungus! It does respond to environmental conditions by forming the hardened sclerotium to survive the winter, but that is just a part of the lifecycle and I couldn't find a specific environmental stimuli that causes it.

HOW IS STRUCTURE RELATED TO FUNCTION?
As in all of biology, the structure of something is always closely related to its function. To begin, as I said above, ergot forms hardened sclerotium to help it survive through the winter months. The structure, the hardened shell, is very much related to the function of staying alive in this case. Also, the sticky honeydew's function is to adhere to other organisms and spread the spores from plant to plant. Obviously, the structure of the honeydew is closely related to its function of spore dispersal. The hyphae structure is also closely related to function because its use is to infiltrate the plant, break down components and sequester nutrients. This structure utilizes exoenzymes to break down the plant components until it reaches the vascular tissue where it then absorbs its nutrients.

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