Fungi, From Killer to Dinner Companion.

According to Roman legend, there once was a cruel boy who tortured a fox by tying straw to its tail and then setting the straw ablaze. The god Robigus was so outraged that he punished humanity with wheat rust, a fungal nightmare that leaves crops looking as though they had been burned. For centuries afterward, the Romans sought to appease the deity through annual sacrifices of dogs and cows unlucky enough to have rust-colored fur. Robigus, Lord of Fungus, is still furiously among us, but these days he's collecting his sacrificial spoils personally. In the eastern United States, thousands of cave-dwelling bats have died of an aggressive fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, and hundreds of thousands if not millions more are at risk of contracting the condition. Frogs and salamanders worldwide are dying in catastrophic numbers, very likely of a fungal disorder called chytridiomycosis, which clogs an amphibian's skin and deranges its blood chemistry. Forests along the western and southern coasts of North America are withering as a result of fungal blooms injected into the wood by pine-boring beetles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]