Autumn is behind the corner, and the mushrooms are here to warn us of its arrival.

These diverse and delicate group of decomposers puts in such great effort to clean up our forests and nature after another successful summer.

I feel the arrival of autumn is the perfect moment to submit a paper on litter decomposition, a project in which I participated with a European network of soil scientists to model the speed at which these below-ground cleaning processes function.

It turns out that breaking down plant litter strongly depends on the climate: the longer and warmer the growing season, the faster the litter disappears. I guess decomposers also prefer to do the dirty outdoor jobs when the weather is nice…

I hope to provide more details on this fascinating subject as soon as the paper is out, cause there is of course a lot to tell.

In the meantime, enjoy these pictures of hard-working mushrooms.