What is a fungal spore ?
Biologically speaking, a fungal spore is a microscopic reproductive unit one or multicelled, used by fungi and other organisms on dispersal of new individuals. Spores contains some food reserve, usually oil or glycogen, they can be produced by meiosis or not. Even if spores are mostly dispesive units, some act as resting structures over unfavorable conditions as intense cold or prolongated drought. The great majority of spores posses firm cell walls. The most recognizable characteristics used to identify spores are color, size, shape, septation and surface characteristics (e.g. ornamentation). However all of them should be very variable even for a genus alone.
Optically speaking a fungal spore has regular edges, when focusing up and down, cytoplasmic structures or oil bubbles give a duller appearance to spores, attachment scars, pores, germ slits or apiculus could be found as areas somewhat flattened, or clearly different in one region of the wall. Similar airborne particles tent to be closser in color, size shape or edges.
What is not a fungal spore ?
- Air bubbles
- Oil drops Starch grains
- Moss/Fern spores
- Ash
- Trichomes
- Fly ash
- Soil particles
- Hyphal fragment