
Wood wide web: Trees' social networks are mapped (2019) - ascertain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48257315
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aldoushuxley001
Great to see an article on mycorrhizal fungi! They’re an essential and under
appreciated part of our ecosystem.

Admittedly though this article is a very skimmed over purview of mycorrhizae’s
roles. Their contention that EM fungi store more carbon than AM fungi, for
example, is dubious, but I’ll have to dig into the source paper to see their
citations.

The realty is both AMF and EMF will sequester carbon. AMF for example produce
a substance called glomalin which is a carbon store and soil glue basically,
but in soils where mycorrhizal fungi are present, glomalin alone can make up
up to 30% of the soil carbon. And glomalin effectively only comes from AMF
(from the genus Glomus). Hence my hesitation to accept that EMF are
responsible for more carbon sequestration than AMF.

Besides that nitpicking, it’s great to hear this dataset is now available tho
because, amongst other things, it’ll be incredibly useful for helping predict
good matches between mycorrhizal inoculant and any particular ecosystem of
interest. Or for example, in my case, when hunting for new wild sources of
mycorrhizal strains I can now make more educated decisions on where to collect
samples.

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aszantu
Strange dream the other day... Green lettuce levitates out off the French
dressing, shakes it off like a dog, bends spacetime and is gone.

I belive putting walls/stone/steel around tree roots is cruelty :(

