Mushrooms arising from the mole latrine reveal the life of talpid moles: proposals of myco-talpology and habitat-cleaning symbiosis
Myco-talpology is the science of moles and mushrooms based on our discovery in 1976 that underground nests of talpid moles can be located by the aboveground fruiting of the agarics Hebeloma danicum or Hebeloma sagarae, a Japanese sibling species of European Hebeloma radicosum. Hyphae of these mushrooms specifically colonise mole latrines near nests, forming ectomycorrhizas with the roots of their host trees. By this process, the hyphae and roots absorb, transform, and translocate the nutrients from mole excretions, cleaning the moles habitat. The mushrooms fruit on the ground with thick root-like tissue stretching up from the ectomycorrhizas. The presence of the fruit bodies serves as the only indicator for underground mole nests, enabling us to provide novel insights into mole ecology. We excavated 74 H. sagarae or H. danicum sites in Japan and 13 H. radicosum sites in Europe and identified the nesting species. These investigations provided new perspectives on latrine making, nest structure, breeding and nestlings, the neighbouring presence of different Talpini species, and long-term nesting at the same site with inhabitant changes. Moreover, they suggested that a tripartite habitat-cleaning symbiosis among moles, mushrooms, and mushroom-host trees in the latrine must have existed for a long time in Japanese and European forests. While moles are traditionally considered inhabitants of open areas, their special relationship with mushrooms and trees suggests they may originally be forest inhabitants.