Others, however, maintain that the wood-wide web is on firm ground and are confident that further research will confirm many of the hypotheses proffered about fungi in forests. Colin Averill, a mycologist at ETH Zurich, said that the evidence Dr. Karst marshaled is impressive. But, he added, “the way I interpret the totality of that evidence is completely different.”
🌳🍄🍄🌳
Most plant roots are colonized by mycorrhizal fungi, forming one of Earth’s most widespread symbioses. The fungi gather water and nutrients from the soil; they then swap some of these treasures with plants in exchange for sugars and other carbon-containing molecules.
David Read, a botanist then at the University of Sheffield, showed in a 1984 paper that compounds labeled with a radioactive form of carbon could flow via fungi between lab-grown plants. Years later, Suzanne Simard, then an ecologist with the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, demonstrated two-way carbon transfer in a forest between young Douglas fir and paper birch trees. When Dr. Simard and her colleagues shaded Douglas firs to reduce how much they photosynthesized, the trees’ absorption of radioactive carbon spiked, suggesting that underground carbon flow could boost young trees’ growth in the shady understory.
Dr. Simard and colleagues published their results in 1997 in the journal Nature, which splashed it on the cover and christened the discovery the “wood-wide web.” Soon after, a group of senior researchers criticized the study, saying it had methodological flaws that confounded the results. Dr. Simard responded to the critiques, and she and her colleagues designed additional studies to address them.
Over time, the criticisms faded, and the wood-wide web gained adherents. Dr. Simard’s 1997 paper has garnered almost 1,000 citations and her 2016 TED Talk, “How trees talk to each other,” has been viewed more than 5 million times.
In his book “The Hidden Life of Trees,” which has sold more than 2 million copies, Peter Wohlleben, a German forester, cited Dr. Simard when describing forests as social networks and mycorrhizal fungi as “fiber-optic internet cables” that help trees inform each other about dangers such as insects and drought.
