Also, I hope we figure out how to fruit mycorhizzal species sooner rather than later :-)
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_e...
One thing I do remember that was quite fascinating, is that the exchange of nutrients and chemicals is almost like a trading network: mycorrhizal fungi will send stuff it produces that trees need to places where the reward (payment) will be highest. An example would be, if the mycorrhizal fungi has phosphorous to "trade" for carbon, if there is a tree that will "pay" less (perhaps because it doesn't need the phosphorous, or it needs carbon for itself), the mycorrhizal fungi would rather divert that phosphorus to another tree that would give a greater return of carbon.
There's a description of this "trading network" here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584331/
Apologies if I described it wrong, I read the book a while ago.
I don’t remember if it’s in that episode or if I read it somewhere else, but fungi will also help parent trees to preferentially provide nutrients to their offspring over other trees of the same species. Perhaps that uses the same mechanism: “this tree tastes a lot like that one, let’s pool their resources.”
The more I learn about forests, the more I see them as superorganisms. I guess that’s what an ecosystem is; it’s just getting harder and harder for me to differentiate a cell vs a plant vs an animal vs an ecosystem in many ways—scale being the main difference, and complexity quite close to it. But that perceived complexity could be an artifact of my perspective as a conscious participant at the scale in which I live, and my familiarity with “what behaviors matter to humans and organisms more like humans.”
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/from-...
Now that nature is a complex web of mutually beneficial interactions, why not (and I'd root for this actually).
If she could remove the emotional side of things it would help I believe.
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/488266595/the-hidden-life-o...
I knew being a tree hugger would make sense one day.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/19/602903697/novelist-richard-po...
Or this one
Radiation-fed mushrooms were found inside Chernobyl.
Mushrooms make up the bulk of a forest, you just can't see them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/podcasts/the-daily/tree-c...