4 hours ago
Earth's vast fungal networks are unravelling fast. Scientists are scrambling to understand why
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/eart...rstand-why
EXCERPTS: Right now, beneath almost every patch of soil on Earth, one of the planet's strangest living structures is spreading. It's a fungus, though nothing like the mushrooms on your dinner plate. Instead, it grows as microscopic threads, finer than cotton, weaving through the soil and into the roots of most plants.
There are several types of these root-dwelling fungi. The most widespread – and the focus of a major new study – are arbuscular mycorrhizal, or AM, fungi. They've been around for hundreds of millions of years, long before the first trees.
Scientists have known for more than a century that they help keep ecosystems alive by ferrying nutrients and water to plants. Yet one surprisingly basic question has remained unanswered until now: just how much of this hidden network is buried underground?
The answer, fresh from a new study by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), is: a hell of a lot.
Laid end to end, it says, the threads of the world's AM fungi would stretch for more than 110 quadrillion kilometres – enough to span about a tenth of the Milky Way, or roughly 11,000 light-years. And those same threads are thought to hold around 300 megatonnes of carbon: four to six times the combined weight of every human alive.
But the study does more than put a staggering number on a hidden world. It raises a bigger question: if something this vast has been growing beneath our feet all along, what is it doing for us – and what happens if it starts to fail?
[...] The uncomfortable truth running through all of this is that we're being asked to look after something we still barely understand. Even the scientists who measured it are quick to point to the edges of their own knowledge.
“We still know relatively little about what they do, how effectively they function, and how their roles vary across environments and host plants,” Field admits. Her co-author, biologist Dr Merlin Sheldrake, agrees: “We still understand too little about how the infrastructure of these living transport systems is distributed across the planet.”
Normally, not knowing enough is a reason to wait and see. Here it cuts the other way. We now know the network is vast, that it quietly holds up most of the world's plant life, and that we're wearing it away fast... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/eart...rstand-why
EXCERPTS: Right now, beneath almost every patch of soil on Earth, one of the planet's strangest living structures is spreading. It's a fungus, though nothing like the mushrooms on your dinner plate. Instead, it grows as microscopic threads, finer than cotton, weaving through the soil and into the roots of most plants.
There are several types of these root-dwelling fungi. The most widespread – and the focus of a major new study – are arbuscular mycorrhizal, or AM, fungi. They've been around for hundreds of millions of years, long before the first trees.
Scientists have known for more than a century that they help keep ecosystems alive by ferrying nutrients and water to plants. Yet one surprisingly basic question has remained unanswered until now: just how much of this hidden network is buried underground?
The answer, fresh from a new study by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), is: a hell of a lot.
Laid end to end, it says, the threads of the world's AM fungi would stretch for more than 110 quadrillion kilometres – enough to span about a tenth of the Milky Way, or roughly 11,000 light-years. And those same threads are thought to hold around 300 megatonnes of carbon: four to six times the combined weight of every human alive.
But the study does more than put a staggering number on a hidden world. It raises a bigger question: if something this vast has been growing beneath our feet all along, what is it doing for us – and what happens if it starts to fail?
[...] The uncomfortable truth running through all of this is that we're being asked to look after something we still barely understand. Even the scientists who measured it are quick to point to the edges of their own knowledge.
“We still know relatively little about what they do, how effectively they function, and how their roles vary across environments and host plants,” Field admits. Her co-author, biologist Dr Merlin Sheldrake, agrees: “We still understand too little about how the infrastructure of these living transport systems is distributed across the planet.”
Normally, not knowing enough is a reason to wait and see. Here it cuts the other way. We now know the network is vast, that it quietly holds up most of the world's plant life, and that we're wearing it away fast... (MORE - missing details)