Fungal Automata Andrew Adamatzky 1 Eric Goles 1,2 Genaro J. Martínez 1,3 Michail-Antisthenis Tsompanas 1 Martin Tegelaar 4 Han A. B. Wosten 4 1 Unconventional Computing Laboratory, UWE, Bristol, UK 2 Faculty of Engineering and Science, University Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile 3 High School of Computer Science, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico 4 Microbiology Department, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands We study a cellular automaton (CA) model of information dynamics on a single hypha of a fungal mycelium. Such a filament is divided in com- partments (here also called cells) by septa. These septa are invagina- tions of the cell wall and their pores allow for the flow of cytoplasm between compartments and hyphae. The septal pores of the fungal phy- lum of the Ascomycota can be closed by organelles called Woronin bod- ies. Septal closure is increased when the septa become older and when exposed to stress conditions. Thus, Woronin bodies act as informa- tional flow valves. The one-dimensional fungal automaton is a binary- state ternary neighborhood CA, where every compartment follows one of the elementary cellular automaton (ECA) rules if its pores are open and either remains in state 0 (first species of fungal automata) or its pre- vious state (second species of fungal automata) if its pores are closed. The Woronin bodies closing the pores are also governed by ECA rules. We analyze a structure of the composition space of cell-state transition and pore-state transition rules and the complexity of fungal automata with just a few Woronin bodies, and exemplify several important local events in the automaton dynamics. Keywords: fungi; ascomycete; Woronin body; cellular automata Introduction 1. The fungal kingdom represents organisms colonizing all ecological niches [1], where they play a key role [2–5]. Fungi can consist of a sin- gle cell, can form enormous underground networks [6] and can form microscopic fruit bodies or fruit bodies weighing up to half a ton [7]. The underground mycelium network can be seen as a distributed https://doi.org/10.25088/ComplexSystems.29.4.759