I would very much like to look into this further, and knowing the specific species etc. would be a great help! The video says “many species,” but I have not yet been able to find any…
I would not consider it a surprising thing to suggest either…But if these “algae-eating” fungi are nothing more than hypothetical constructs (which I do not necessarily think they are), then some considerable doubt would be cast on this theory of lichenization. However, if they are real, we should be able to see lichens “evolving” in this fashion today (and that would be interesting to look into, would you not agree?)!
The nature of the lichen symbiosis is not clear. It is generally thought to be mutualistic but this concept is not supported by experimental evidence1. Early workers2,3 considered that .lichens represented algae parasitized by fungi—as evidence, they noted algal cells in a lichen thallus that were dead or penetrated by fungal haustoria. Others, however, cited the seemingly healthy and long-lasting nature of lichens as evidence of mutualism. As we report here, our observations of artificial syntheses of the mycobiont Cladonia cristatella (‘British soldiers’) with different algae suggest that the relationship in this lichen is one of controlled parasitism. The mycobiont formed squamules mostly with algae related to its natural phycobiont, an indication perhaps of a long period of co-evolution between the symbionts of this lichen.
This is a great example of the type of controversy that drives evolutionary science. There are two possible mechanisms (that we’ve described so far) for lichens (parasitism or slow feeding), in at least this case it appears to be parasitism.
Let’s be clear here. I am no expert in lichens, nor is the author of that video. The key point, however, is that there are plausible mechanisms. And in some cases we might be able to figure out which mechanism is more likely.
I think way better than trying to trace the origins of something that might have required generations of human time to consolidate… why not look to experiments that created a new kind of life right in front of the scientists!
I think this is a pretty important finding … buried within one of the hundreds of YouTube videos on Evolution !
Protists that fed on algae cells swallowed some that would not be digested and did not die… and they were lucky they did! Those algae cells helped the Protists survive starvation - - and provide an exquisite parallel to the acquisition of proto-mitochondria by one celled life ages ago…
