Mushroom

Dead wood is particularly in the habitat and species used as a collective term for dead trees or parts thereof. Roughly one distinguishes it standing dead wood, or not yet fallen dead trees or their parts, and lying dead wood, already on the ground. Standing dead wood is rarer. It usually offers a greater variety of location criteria and is ecologically very valuable. The concept of "dead wood" is used here in a broader sense, it includes also slightly damaged, diseased or dying trees, shrubs, and parts thereof.

Dead wood is consumed by many organisms that have evolved over the course of evolution adapted to this habitat. Depending on the type of wood and the state of the decay process are about 600 species of mushrooms and around the 1350 beetle species involved in the complete remineralization of the timber body. Between fungi and insects are different dependency relationships. Insects carry mushroom spores back to the wood surpluses, while the mushroom power and living space for the insects can be.

This is an example of lying dead wood that slowly consumed by a mushroom.