(ORDO NEWS) — A school biology course tells us that plants and fungi often form a close and mutually beneficial symbiosis – mycorrhiza.
It is hypothesized that the network of fungal mycelia even allows trees to exchange food and chemical signals. However, the new analysis showed that all these representations do not have any reliable evidence.
Higher plants and fungi live in close interaction. The mycelium of soil fungi closely braids the roots of trees, forming a symbiotic mycorrhiza, the participants of which actively exchange nutrients and minerals.
In recent years, notions have gained prominence that see this union as much deeper.
According to one hypothesis, the mushroom mycelium serves as a kind of “global network” (wood wide web) for the trees, through which they interact and communicate with each other.
These ideas often pop up in the popular media, although they are not shared by all experts.
In fact, there is no reliable evidence for many of the ideas about the nature and functions of mycorrhiza, including its undoubted benefits for the plants themselves.
This is demonstrated by a new analysis of the scientific literature by Justine Karst and her colleagues at the Canadian University of Alberta.
Biologists have examined and summarized the results of 26 previous studies on this topic, and found that we still have a very poor understanding of the relationship between plants and fungi.
The authors focused on three key “facts” about mycorrhiza, showing that none of them has ever received 100% reliable evidence.
In particular, studies have shown that nutrient flows do indeed flow through the “mushroom network”.
But there is no evidence that they are impossible without mycorrhiza, or that plants or their seeds benefit from such a union.
According to scientists, as a rule, experiments do not demonstrate a noticeable effect of fungi on plant growth.
Another claim that mycorrhiza serves as a network through which plants can share deficient nutrients with each other or transmit signals of insect invasion has not found any support in the literature at all.
Finally, even such a basic “fact” as the ubiquity of mycorrhiza in the forest also remains unproven. The authors note that there are still no sufficiently large-scale studies in this regard.
“We can conclude that the knowledge about mycorrhiza is too fragmentary and unreliable for use in forestry,” the scientists concluded.
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