Convergent biosynthesis of psilocybin in an ectomycorrhizal lineage: is the psychoactive end-product the selected trait?
EcoEvoRxiv July 1, 2026 Mellica Askari, Varun Surapaneni preprint
The fungivore-deterrence hypothesis, that psilocybin evolved as a chemical defence against arthropod fungivores via 5-HT receptor agonism, has become the working consensus in fungal chemical ecology, despite resting on a phylogenomic pattern of horizontal gene transfer among saprotrophs and remarkably little direct experimental evidence. Recent biochemistry shows that the ectomycorrhizal...