"The fungi would penetrate the roots of nearby plants, so some scientists suspected they were parasites. But over the following years, as Kiers earned her PhD and became an evolutionary biologist, she and other researchers showed that mycorrhizae were exchanging resources: They gave the plants phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for sugars and fats that plants made from carbon in the air."
"This led Kiers to the defining question of her career: Were plants and fungi canny economic actors? Was there a market pricea fluctuating exchange ratebetween phosphorus and carbon? Her goal is not to figure out whether fungi can trade and make economic decisions as well as us brainy humans. Instead, she suspects that by some measures fungi are better at economics than usand some of the world's most powerful corporations seem to think she might be right."
At 19, Toby Kiers worked at Barro Colorado studying rainforest ecology and discovered mycorrhizal fungi forming vast, invisible underground networks. These fungi penetrate plant roots and exchange nutrients: they supply phosphorus and nitrogen while receiving sugars and fats produced from plant carbon. Research showed these exchanges can operate like markets, with fluctuating exchange rates between nutrients and carbon. Kiers framed questions about plants and fungi as economic actors and found evidence that fungi may manage resource exchanges exceptionally well. Plants also exhibit behaviors resembling intelligence, including communication, defensive chemical responses, and learned tolerance of recurring harm.
Read at www.npr.org
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