And if all mold spores went extinct suddenly, would the world be better or worse?
In: Biology
This is a bit of a hypothetical question, so may be removed.
Briefly though, yes mold does do good.
In some cases it may provide a food source to various creatures. In other cases it may act as a poison to keep populations of certain animals under control.
“good” is an extremely relative term when you’re talking about species. are humans “good” for cows? for corn? they are more successful species because of us…
one thing mold does do is break down things into parts that can be reused by other organisms. this is “good” when it’s organic matter on the forest floor, and “bad” when it’s food spoilage. they are used in making some foods and medicines, so we’d miss that, for sure.
Molds help decompose organic matter. When things die, various organisms help break down the remains so that they end up back as nutrients in the soil that can be used by plants. Without molds, it’s possible some other decomposing organism would fill the niche, but it’s hard to say for certain what impact it would have.
The world would be far worse. Mold breaks down a lot of organic materials, and in doing so helps to return them to the circle of life. Without mold, a very large part of the resources in organisms that die would end up being lost.
Mold actually caused the drug pencillin to be made!
Penicillin kills bacteria by inhibiting cell wall synthesis of peptidoglycan.
While the other answers are important. They leave out the most important reason we need mold: cheese! Camembert in a fondue makes the world go ’round.
The most common mold on the planet, the green stuff that grows in your refrigerator, is called trichoderma, and it [stimulates the growth of plants and protects them from pathogens](http://www.plantprotection.pl/Trichoderma-spp-application-and-prospects-for-use-in-organic-farming-and-industry,93508,0,2.html) Trichoderma spores are toxic to humans in high doses, but absolutely necessary to healthy soil.
More generally, mold is just fungus that has a short life cycle. It breaks down dead stuff, and returns nutrients to the soil. Fungi that produce mushrooms do the same thing, but they have a longer life cycle than mold. Fungus turns death into something that can sustain life; they are absolutely essential to life.
Hundreds of millions of years ago there were no trees. Then plants evolved a method to make lignum which is the woody tissue that trees are made from. It took a further 60 million years for fungi and molds to evolve a method to break that lignum down and decompose trees when they died.
In that 60 million year period trees dominated the planet and when they died they turned into coal. All the coal was made in that time before fungi and mold could ‘eat’ lignum. No coal has been made since then.
So if mold and fungi suddenly went extinct, trees wouldn’t decompose when they died, and we would eventually have lots of new coal.
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