For the first time, ancient DNA from droppings left by New Zealand’s flightless moa identifies actual species of fungi the doomed birds ate.
The snacks, including purple lumps of a trufflelike fungus, might have been berry mimics, says paleoecologist Alex Boast of Manaaki Whenua–Landcare Research in Lincoln, New Zealand. For fungal spores inside the lumps, getting gulped by a bird could beat just drifting on some air current to find new homes, Boast and colleagues propose January 15 in Biology Letters. Hitchhiker spores in a bird gut would have been carried into new territory and excreted or, as Boast puts it, “deposited in a rich growing medium.”
Fungi are