this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Fungi: mycelia, mushrooms & more

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Urban fungi in Singapore (discoverwildscience.com)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by solo@slrpnk.net to c/fungus@slrpnk.net
 

Singapore’s ultra-clean air encourages fungi to flourish in unique ways—showcasing surprising fungal diversity in a thriving urban ecosystem.

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[–] solo@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have the impression that this article exagerates how clean the air in Sigapore currently is. I found a site that has real-time info, but I am not familliar with how this is calculated or if this info is trustworthy.

So, if anyone knows stuff about this topic, let us know!

[–] WZ_Shenhai@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hi! (Obligatory withholding of information so I don't dox myself) I do work in one of Singapore's universities: we do not have even remotely enough trained mycologists in the country to know if this is happening. I also recently participated in a small study in another Asian university where air from a few Asian countries was sampled for pollution: the air in Singapore is not as clean as a number of others (I.E. if these changes happened in Singapore they likely happened elsewhere too).

Additionally, none of the information in the article cites any scientific articles, and a lot of the images used are sourced from Wikimedia, and many of them aren't even of fungi native to Singapore; the city picture even features overwintering trees even though Singapore is sitting on the equator!!!

My personal take: Although Discover Wild Science endorses AI use for content generation with transparency and the article itself doesn't mention being AI-generated, I personally think the article reads as AI-generated. The author Maria Faith Saligumba also writes >10 articles a day which I think is frankly a ridiculous amount of information to research, organise and communicate to a layman audience. So, TLDR I think the whole article is AI-generated fake news.

[–] solo@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for your input. I was about to delete this article but I believe it's worth keeping because of your comment.

[–] WZ_Shenhai@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 months ago

I appreciate your readiness to question the integrity of information :)