Can hidden fungal networks help save terrestrial existence?

About 500 million years ago, when aquatic plants began to slowly advance towards land, they could not have lived there on their own. they Recruits mycorrhizal fungal networkswhich served as their root systems for the a few tens of millions of years Before they develop their own abilities and can live independently. Still, about 90 percent of plants depend on symbiotic fungi.

But during that time, the planet has changed: Early plants and their fungal networks helped Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 90 percent, allowing conditions for Life on Earth as we know it.

These days, human activities are driving up levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (although not quite as high as during the pre-fungi period), and scientists and other fungi enthusiasts know that fungi may be able to help siphon off some of this. carbon again.

To Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and author of Tangled Lives: How Fungi Create Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, this is really just one of the amazing things that fungi of all kinds do: as “ecosystem engineers,” and as agents of our lives on This planet, whose centrality we ignore “at our own peril,” he said.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed.

There has been such a surge of interest in fungi recently, and I’m wondering how you make sense of that, or why you think that has happened. Your book is certainly a big part of that.

I think there are several reasons. One is that we know more about fungi than we used to – technological advances over the past two decades have led to really exciting discoveries and given new access to fungal life.

There is also a growing awareness of the fundamental interconnectedness of the living world—spurred by both new research and the worsening ramifications of ecocide activities—which has led to an ecological shift in academic and popular discourse. Fungi embody the simplest principle of ecology: the principle of the relationships between organisms. Mycelium is environmental connective tissue and reminds us that all forms of life, including humans, are linked by webs of turbulent relationships, some visible and others less so.

Fungi may have become the inspirations for ecological thinking, but interest in wildlife was also spurred by the advent of network science. The “network” has become a key concept, from computing to sociology, to neuroscience, ecology, and economic systems. Fungi are ancient living networks, and the recent surge of interest in these organisms reflects our modern fascination with the extraordinary power of networks, from transportation systems to the Internet, to shape our lives and our cultures.

Then there is the urgency. There are a number of ways we can partner with fungi to help us adapt to life on a damaged planet, and we don’t know what we should know. Multiplying environmental emergencies have led to renewed interest in the fungal world, and there are many radical possibilities for mycology.

Some fungi produce powerful antiviral compounds that reduce colony collapse disorder in honey bees. In the fungicidal remediation process, fungi can be harnessed to break down toxic contaminants. In the molding industry, fungi are used to produce sustainable materials, from bricks to leather. Not to mention the many ways fungi change the way we think, feel, and imagine.

I was reading an editorial I co-wrote in the Guardian about the opportunity mycorrhizal fungal networks provide for carbon and nutrient cycling and storage. What do you think about bridging the gap between popular cultural interest in fungi and regulation for the conservation of these organisms?

Fungi are an underrated kingdom of life. they neglected in conservation frameworks, Educational curricula, scientific and medical research. Part of the challenge is to raise awareness of wildlife and the many vital roles they play in the biosphere, of course.

But this is only the beginning. I work with an organization called Ground Grid Protection Association, that attempts to create robust maps of the planet’s fungal communities that can be used by decision makers to account for life in soils. I work with two other organizations called Fungal plants and the Fungi Foundation, which works to write fungi into conservation frameworks, many of which currently exclude this third kingdom of macroscopic life. When we destroy fungal communities, we undermine the ancient life-support systems that make so much life possible.

Even without the data, when we’re just talking about carbon sequestration in forests or grasses, fungal-fungal networks don’t usually enter the conversation. Perhaps this is our bias of being primarily visual beings, that we look for the thing we can see.

Despite the fact that soils are a major pool of carbon, we tend to neglect underground ecosystems. This is partly because we don’t know much about what’s going on underground and so many lives we live out of sight. It is difficult to study these organisms and what they do. at recent days the paper you were a part of, We discuss these challenges in more depth. Our estimates of carbon transferred to soils by mycorrhizal fungi are incomplete and should be interpreted with caution, but they do give an indication of how important fungal relationships are in mediating nutrient fluxes in global ecosystems.

When I was reading your book, I often thought, I can’t believe I don’t know this. Fungi made life on Earth possible, yet much of what I wrote about was completely new to me. It got me thinking, How do we know anything we think we know?

I like to study the living world because our inquiries often make the familiar unfamiliar. Fungi, like many organisms, invite us to think in new ways about many well-handled concepts we might have thought we understood. There are many pressing challenges we face today, and there are many ways we can partner with fungi to help adapt to life on a damaged planet. And there’s a lot we don’t know.