Wood Wide Web

Researchers have discovered that the trees in a wood are connected by a network of mycorrhizal fungi that grow around and in their roots, a phenomenon they have called the Wood Wide Web.

The symbiotic relationship between the trees and the fungi has been likened to trade: the fungi use digestive enzymes to release nutrients from the soil that the trees could not otherwise access and trade it for the sugars, the products of photosynthesis, that the fungi, without chlorophyll and living underground, cannot produce for themselves.

But it seems the interaction goes further than the trading of resources between organisms from two entirely different kingdoms….

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