THIS year has been a particularly good year for the Fly Agaric Toadstool which has been made famous in children's stories because of its and white speckled appearance.

In all the nature reserves, the dead and dying remains of this year's fungal blooms can be seen.

Their once spectacular forms are now decaying remains, providing welcome fodder for slugs and snails.

This fleeting and apparently futile existence of the Fly Agaric and other fungi raises the question, what possible role do these and other fungi play in the ecology of the nature reserves?

Fungi are strange life forms as they do not fall into the classic Victorian classification of animal, mineral or vegetable.

They are certainly a life form but show none of the characteristics of an animal, seeking out and hunting food or of a plant which has the ability to create its own food by photosynthesising the energy of the sun's rays.

Fungi occupy a kingdom of life forms all of their own.

They get their energy in the majority of cases, from dissolving nutrients from the dead materials of other life forms.

The typical "mushroom-like" body we encounter is only a fraction of the fungal life form.

The main body of the fungus is a tangle of generally underground filaments known as hyphae.

These are woven together into a cotton wool-like structure to form the main mass of the fungi known as the mycelium.

This hidden body of the fungus is where the majority of the day-to-day functions of the fungi take place and this part can live for hundreds of years.

The part we encounter growing above the ground is the fungi reproductive structure, its purpose being to spread tiny fungal spores.

As to where fungi fit in the ecology of the natural world, the majority of them perform a vital function as nature's recyclers.

Fungi breakdown dead bodies of other life forms, turning the wasted material that resulted from their deaths into useful and often essential nutrients which the rest of the living world depends on.

There are a few exceptions to this. A few fungi don't wait for the life form to die and instead attack living creatures.

An example of this is the athlete's foot fungi that attacks some of us humans.