In a remarkable display of cooperation, specialized fungi eject spores sitting atop their fruiting bodies at high speeds in rapid succession to generate a miniature wind current that carries their progeny 20 times farther than a single spore could travel on its own.

Spore puffs from Sclerotinia sclerotiorum Image: M. Roper

Combining mathematical theory with high speed video, a team led by applied mathematician linkurl:Marcus Roper;http://math.berkeley.edu/%7Emroper/www/Home.html of the University of California, Berkeley, watched as Sclerotinia sclerotiorum -- a pathogenic fungus that infects the flowers of crop plants -- performed this impressive reproductive feat, which involves the ejection of fungal spores from some 100,000 separate sacs, known as asci. The team also demonstrated how the cooperating spores can evade obstacles by riding the air current they create. Their results are reported in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The explosion seems to be triggered by a...