Returning from Ecuador, where we encountered several types of Cordyceps or insect-eating fungi.
this is the C. curculionium, which grew on weevils and has a very pronounced knob at the end, with the tiny craters of perithecia dotting the surface. I trained the microscope on the mouth of the peritecia on the head, and to my surprise it ERUPTED with strands of mycelia! As I watched...

the hyphae SHOT out of this perithecium as I watched!

Look at the spore on this hyphae.

a series of images shows the rapid elongation of the hyphae

the emerging hyphae

a closer look. the next series will show the filaments unraveling!

After shooting out from the perithecial opening on the red weevil-eating Ophiocordyceps, in the last pictures:

these hyphae just shot out of the pore atop the red Ophiocordyceps curculionium then streamed outward as a filament for a few dozen fields in the microscope. Towards the far end these filaments seemed to swell and unravel

here you see the filaments unwinding and forming spores. This took just minutes to grow and disperse!

Here the filament disintegrates into hundreds of torpedo shaped spores. Apparently each one is a 1/8 fragment of an ascospore.  The same enzyme that these fungi use to dissolve the chitin of the spore wall during germination can eat right through the chitinous exoskeleton of an insect.