Fungi spores travel in their own wind.

The fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, produces thousands of spores  simultaneously to form group of seeds that reduces drag to nearly zero and even creates a wind that carries many of the spores 20 times farther than a single spore could travel alone, according to a new study by mathematicians and biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University and Cornell University.

"In the Tour de France, riders form a peloton that can reduce air drag by 40 percent," said co-lead author Marcus Roper, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at UC Berkeley and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "The ascospores of Sclerotinia do the peloton perfectly, reducing air drag to zero and sculpting a flow of air that carries them even farther. Obviously, this strategy helps the fungi get their spores off the ground into the foliage of their host plants, or into airstreams that can carry them to host plants, the scientists say.