Wood wide web: trees’ social networks are mapped
Research has shown that beneath every forest and wood
there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and
bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another.
This subterranean social network, nearly 500 million years
old, has become known as the “wood wide web”. Now, an
international study has produced the first global map of the
“mycorrhizal fungi networks” dominating this secretive world.
Using machine-learning, researchers from the Crowther
Lab at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Stanford University in the
US used the database of the Global Forest Initiative, which
covers 1.2 million forest tree plots with 28,000 species, from
more than 70 countries. Using millions of direct observations
of trees and their symbiotic associations on the ground,
the researchers could build models from the bottom up to
visualise these fungal networks for the first time. Prof Thomas
Crowther, one of the authors of the report, told the BBC, “It’s
the first time that we’ve been able to understand the world
beneath our feet, but at a global scale.”
The research reveals how important mycorrhizal networks
are to limiting climate change — and how vulnerable they are
to the effects of it. “Just like an Magnetic Resonance Imaging
scan of the brain helps us to understand how the brain works,
this global map of the fungi beneath the soil helps us to
understand how global ecosystems work,” said Prof Crowther.
“What we find is that certain types of microorganisms live in
certain parts of the world, and by understanding that we can
figure out how to restore different types of ecosystems and
also how the climate is changing.” Losing chunks of the wood
wide web could well increase “the feedback loop of warming
temperatures and carbon emissions.”
Mycorrhizal fungi are those that form a symbiotic
relationship with plants. There are two main groups of
mycorrhizal fungi: arbuscular fungi (AM) that penetrate the
host’s roots, and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EM) which surround
the tree’s roots without penetrating them.
(Claire Marshall. www.bbc.com, 15.05.2019. Adaptado.)
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