One teaspoon of soil in the Amazon contains 1,800 microscopic life forms - 400 of which are mushrooms.
Surprisingly, fungus abounds in the Amazon jungle land. In fact, most of the total 3.8 million mushrooms in the world have not been officially classified.
To help protect the Amazon rainforest, which is threatened to disappear at an increasingly rapid pace, it is important to understand the role of mold, said the research team led by Prof. Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on the BBC website.
"Take a teaspoon of soil and you will find hundreds or thousands of species," he said. "Mushrooms are the next frontier of biodiversity science."
To find out about soil from the Amazon rainforest, the researchers collected soil samples and leaf litter from four regions.
Genetic analysis revealed hundreds of different fungi, including mosses, fungi that live in plant roots, and pathogenic fungi, which are mostly unknown or very rare. Most species have not yet been named and investigated.
The natural open grassland area, known as campinas, is the richest habitat for mushrooms. They can help the soil to take in more nutrients.
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