Comedy of the Week Nature Table
Apr 20, 2026
Sara Pascoe, comedian and writer, brings comic curiosity. Lee Davies, Kew fungarium manager, explains wood‑rotting fungi, dry rot and stinkhorns. Dr Erica McAlister, Diptera curator, reveals marine midges, botflies and fly biology. They explore church‑eating rot, marine midge mating oddities, fungal bioelectricity and the myth of an "orgasm fungus."
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Marine Midges Live Fast And Mate Faster
- Marine midges have an adult lifespan under three hours and females remain larva-like while only developing genitalia for reproduction.
- Males emerge earlier, use antennae to locate females that invert through the sea surface to present genitalia for a rapid mating frenzy.
Timing Drives Midge Reproductive Synchrony
- Midge emergence and mating are synchronised by environmental cues like moonlight, tides and seasons.
- Erica warns climate change can disrupt these cues, threatening the species' precisely timed reproductive events.
Fungi Cracked Wood Digestion And Ate A Church
- Lee Davies recounts how fungi evolved the ability to digest lignin about 290 million years ago, ending large-scale coal formation.
- He illustrates with circular lacrimans that famously infested St Andre's Church, eating wood and even extracting ions from plaster and concrete.