MyCorrhizal fungi are the supply chains of the ground. With filaments thinner than hair, they commute vital nutrients on plants and tree roots.
In exchange, the fungi receive carbon to grow their networks. In this way, 13 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide-one third of the emissions of fossil fuels worldwide, every year, comes into the ground.
These fungi cannot live on their own; They need the carbon of plants. In turn, 80 percent of the world plants relate to fungal networks to survive and thrive. The two are dependent trading partners.
These fungi make incorrect smart choices, even without a brain or central nervous system. Scientists describe them as ‘living algorithms’.
The trade algorithms reward the efficiency: build the most lucrative route that is possible for the lowest construction costs.
Fungal networks seem to assess supply and demand. Which plants are nutrients most needed? Which offers the most carbon? Where is the optimum payment? This analysis is how the networks expand, as scientists learned when they mapped out the growth in real time.
“Fungi are super smart,” said Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at the Free University of Amsterdam. “They constantly adjust their trade routes. They evaluate their environment very precisely. It is a lot of decision -making. “
How do fungi do? To find out, Dr. grew. Kier and her colleagues fungi in hundreds of petri dishes or ‘fungal arenas’.
Subsequently, the team followed the growth of the networks Non -Stop for days with an image robot for days, measuring how the organisms have reformed their trade routes in response to various circumstances. Their study was published on 26 February in the Nature magazine.
From special nodes or growing tips, implement the fungi filaments that explore and assess new territory. For several days, the scientists have labeled half a million new nodes and monitored and mapped the expansion.
The growth revealed fungal decision in action. For example, the team has learned that a fungus issues that trade with nearby plants in favor of more distant people if the return to carbon is greater.
Fungal networks are sometimes described as the blood circulation of the soil.
But the power is open in fungal networks. Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water and even fungal cores move in both directions, even in opposing directions at the same time.
“That is physically astonishing,” said Tom Shimizu, a biophysicist at Amolf, a physics institute in Amsterdam, and whose Lab built the robot. The fungus, he said, “is actually a microbe that plays economic games. How do you do that if you only fluid a tube fluid? “
They do it by obeying a number of fundamental local rules. As the growing tips progress, new branches behind it form in a steady speed. But when one tip touches another, they melt and form a loop.
This removes dead end, avoids waste expansion and keeps resources quickly on the main roads. The edge of the fungal network expands like a wrinkle and lays down an efficient trade Nexus as it goes.
Scientists still want to understand how fungi so far move so much carbon without hiding the pipes. And they hope to simulate how these old organisms react to forest fires, drought and other disruptions of climate change. “We try to find out how they play the games they play,” said Dr. Shimizu.
Credits: Corentin Bisot – Amolf/VU Amsterdam; Loreto Oyarte Gálvez – VU Amsterdam/Amolf; Rachael Cargill – VU Amsterdam/Amolf; Vasilis Kokkoris – VU Amsterdam/Amolf/Spun; Joe Togneri/Spun; Look vugs.
Produced by Antonio de Luca And Elia Walker.
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