By: Natalie Oulikhanian
The “world wide web” has made humans more connected to one another than ever. Through the use of this network, the world has been able to globalize and shape the way that individuals view concerns and ideas in modern life — through an increase of considering others. However impactful this system is, the online web and the internet is invisible and intangible. Similarly, breakthroughs suggest that forests share a similar hidden and under researched interconnected system under the ground that allows plants and fungi to work in cooperation for their shared goal of survival. Although often informally referred to as the “wood wide web”, these mycorrhizal (my⸱cor⸱rhi⸱zal) networks indeed share characteristics to its online counterpart such as its ability to ease problems in the forest such as scarcity or its ability to gain and share information that can benefit all actors of the network. This bustling of action happening to plants rightfully raises our curiosity. Even though it is certain that plants are alive like other organisms in the environment, their passiveness and staticity caused them to fall in the in-between state of an object and organism. Its actions can seem unrelatable for moving and active creatures such as ourselves, however there are more connections to be made to plants and with us than is visible and known. The motion that trees especially are solitary and selfish in competing for space and resources is argued to be far too simplistic for the nature of forests themselves where there exists conflict and room for negotiation and reciprocity. By examining the success of an old-growth forest in comparison to separately-living trees, its prosperity is not derived from different organisms accepting the impassive presence of their neighbours; its success is instead the result of an intricate and intermingling society where without collaboration the forest would see its downfall. This underground and connecting network promises answers to a significant question in evolutionary biology: whether or not cooperation, like competition, is a defining feature of evolution?
Mycorrhizal networks get its name from mycorrhizae (literally translating to fungus root), or the mutually-benefiting relationship between fungi and plants. Although mycorrhizal networks permeate various environments such as prairies, grasslands, and the arctic tundra, forests are especially researched and are of large focus in experiments. In forests, the roots of trees reach a limit after a certain period of growth and can only gain so many resources with what it has. Fungi however have thin roots extending further than those of trees which provides the opportunity of a sharing of resources through interlocking the two roots. Mycelium, or the network of these fungal threads, will wrap around the roots of a tree and fuse with them to help them deliver nutrients such as phosphorus, nitrogen, and water so that trees can continue their biogeochemical cycles and in return fungi will receive glucose that the tree will generate. The exchange that happens between these organisms is not uncommon nor unexpected. To increase rates of survival, dependencies on external sources does not make evolution derive from cooperation any more than it features competition and greed. However, criticism to the argument that competition drives evolution in nature is produced out of the other uses that mycorrhizal networks have.
Not only do mycorrhizal networks help to provide trees with added nutrients, but the connections made can be negotiations, reprociating, and sometimes selfless. These underground networks often create links between dense and vast congregations of trees and fungi, all roots finding a connection with another through often no more than three degrees of separation, justifying its nickname as the “wood wide web.” The effects that a connection has on this scale can be locally or widely-benefiting. It provides trees the opportunity to share their nutrients with their fellow plants, nurture their seedlings, and warn others of danger through the use of chemicals to signal their message. Some trees even reveal the characteristic of being selfless by favouring and exceedingly nurturing their seedlings using the mycorrhizal framework. In another example, a dying tree may excess their collected nutrients into the mycorrhizal network so that the closest trees can be more healthy and prosperous than them.
When exploring and observing a forest individually, it may never occur that the trees and plants surrounding you can experience your presence in the same way that we might experience theirs. The wood wide web allows for trees to be perceptive to their environment and possess senses that might be unimaginable to something that is assumed to lean towards being static by nature. Rather, the ability for trees to sense and adjust accordingly with the conditions given to them at any time are a consequence of signals transferred through the mycorrhizal network intending to benefit the forest entirely. In one example, if a predator to the plant is active, trees might prompt the production of chemical defences to alert neighbouring plants. Another study suggests that trees can make direct connections with senses such as sound. The sound of water or a bee’s wings whirring induce for roots to grow in direction to the water source or for flowering plants to sweeten their nectar. However, the network is not always harmonious and for every beneficial exchange made between organisms, an orchid might steal carbon from its neighbours or a black walnut tree would spread toxic chemicals using the connections.
The implementations of this discovery can not only help in a variety of industries, but also in research quality, and the theories regarding nature and the science of evolution. In its first use, a mycorrhizal network provides a natural and sustainable method to controlling pests and disease in an interconnected field of plants and fungi. When a plant senses the danger that a pest will have on itself and the rest of its community, signals might be produced in the network prompting for the production of organic repellents and chemicals. Including this pre-made pesticide in agricultural practices might ensure that food security is made on alternative sustainable methods. Additionally, by understanding the necessity that plants and fungi have on their mycorrhizal network can initiate changes in experiments about forests and the growing of them. Rather than continuing the old practice of artificially planting straight lines of separated trees, the life expectancy and health of trees will actually increase through the mimicking of natural systems. Most significantly however, the breakthrough of an altruistic system in nature refutes Darwin’s prolonging evolutionary concept that competition is the only component to evolution and success in the wild.
One of the oldest debates in biology is whether or not cooperation is as central to evolution as competition and selfishness is. By applying Darwinian theory on evolutionary science, trees should strive alone by competing for their resources between their neighbouring trees. The wood wide web suggests that trees are rather communal and selfless by nature and that these characteristics have actually improved the success of trees more than if they would be provided with an environment promoting competition.
Mycorrhizal networks are an under researched aspect of biology, however the understanding of why they occur, their effects, and possible implementations may transform the way that current scientists view theories on forests, evolution, and competition in nature — possibly even suggesting that the forest itself only works as its own “superorganism.” There is also much that humans can learn about these interconnected and beneficial networks and the connections they have — online or not. In the same way that our society is characterised by cooperation and exploitation of humans through the world wide web or elsewhere, nature might just as well be built on these same connections that have existed long before us.
Comprehension Questions:
Q: What is a mycorrhizal network, or the wood wide web?
A: A mycorrhizal network is the intermingling relationship that occurs under the ground of where plants and fungi grow. Through the connection of roots, plants and fungi can benefit a forest entirely because of the network’s ability to transfer resources to the other and even send signals throughout entire forests so that the community can adjust to conditions such as a change in sense around them or the intrusion of a predator.
Q: Why is altruism in plants such a significant breakthrough in biology and evolutionary science?
A: Research on mycorrhizal networks demonstrate that nature perhaps does not thrive on competition and exploitation of other elements. Rather, the mutual benefit that is created through the connections in these networks suggest that cooperation is just as equal to competition in the growth of a forest and the future of a species entirely.
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