Edit: looking at all the elaborate replies, I cannot help being amazed. Here I thought the Fedi is overrepresented by computer geeks (such as yours truly) but obviously they've got NOTHING on the biologically inclined here! 🥰😍

If poisonous mushrooms are poisonous because it is advantageous for the survival of the specific species, are non poisonous mushroom relatively speaking weaker, less well equipped for the furthering of their species? I suppose that the ability to survive and further a species is multifaceted and that being poisonous or the lack thereof is just one of many parameters?

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[–] 4 points 2 days ago

Another thing to note is that evolution works on everything all at once. The fact that a chemical is poisonous to mammals can be coincidentally when the real purpose is for something else. Fungus have to do lots of decomposing and digesting of different compounds.

Also to note that the mushroom part is just the fruiting body for the fungus that spreads the seeds. So poison there is under a different evolutionary pressure than a poison frog who will die when eaten . If the fruiting body spreads spores then it's done it's job

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