FUNGUS GNAT and FUNGUS GNAT LARVAE
Fungus gnat larvae are one of the tiny creatures that infect mushrooms. The flying insects around the mushrooms is irritating enough, but inside you may come across the larvae that have hatched from their eggs. Writing on the Mushroom Marauder website Adam Mcrae tells us that
- While they resemble mosquitos, they cannot bite and are harmless to humans... but they can be incredibly annoying, flying into your eyes, nose and mouth and often in large swarms.
- Their larvae are also harmless, and edible, which is good because even with the best of methods, you're not going to remove every single one.
- The term "fungus gnat" applies to dozens of species over several families of animal, and I'm not going to even begin to differentiate them here.
The article on Mushroom Marauder discusses what to look for and what to do about it.
Merlin Sheldrake writing in his book Entangled Life is keen to point out a symbiotic relationship between fungi and other creatures such as larvae, insects and microbes. In this case it may be rather one-sided, but the fact that mushroom gnats have evolved to depend so entirely on mushrooms is pertinent.
This is the sliced stalk of a clouded funnel mushroom. It is fairly hollow and you can see why. The white larvae of mushroom gnats have eaten their way through it.
A closer view showing the small black head. This picture is from the Mushroom Marauder website as below.
MERLIN SHELDRAKE : Entangled Life. Vintage. 2020. ISBN 9781784708276'
MUSHROOM MARAUDER website : https://mushroommarauder.com/blogs/cleaning-foraged-mushrooms/how-to-get-bugs-and-worms-out-of-mushrooms
