Introduction: Keylevels of biocommunication in fungi

Abstract

In contrast to former opinions, communicative acts are not restricted only to information exchange between a sender and a receiver, but designate a variety of social interactions mediated by signals according to syntactic (combinatorial), pragmatic (context dependent) and semantic (content-specific) rules. On one side, development and growth of fungal organisms depends upon successful communication processes within, and between, cells of fungal organisms. However, on the other side, sign mediated interactions are necessary to coordinate behaviour with the same, or related, fungal species and with non-related organisms such as bacteria, plants and animals. In order to generate an appropriate response behaviour, fungal organisms must be able to sense, interpret and memorise important indices from the abiotic environment and adapt to them appropriately. However, these communication and interpretation processes can also fail. In such cases the overall consequences could be disease-causing, or even lethal. Interestingly, certain rules of fungal communication are very similar to those of animals, while others more closely resemble those of plants.