The Social Life of Forests

December 3, 2020 2:36 PM

Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?
posted by Ahmad Khani (43 comments total)

Much of this was also covered in a great episode of Radio Lab: From Tree to Shining Tree
posted by bassomatic at 2:47 PM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Vicious gossip for sure
posted by SkinnerSan at 2:50 PM on December 3, 2020 [7 favorites]

There is clearly significant scientific work going on about fungi, but I never quite know what to trust as a non-expert.

It is clear that much of the popular science about fungi is not accurate and that claims are being overhyped. In particular, I think psychedelic evangelists have started to do this a lot in recent years.

I really enjoyed this article as a balanced yet thorough look at the topic -- I feel like I have a somewhat better grip on things.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:03 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

There was a really good book about fungi that came out this year, Entangled Life.
posted by jeather at 3:09 PM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

What are they sharing with one another?

Unrest.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:12 PM on December 3, 2020 [12 favorites]

MetaFilter mycorrhiza:
Should this tree have the same rights as you? (3 Nov 2019)

The Wood Wide Web (13 July 2019)

Underland (18 May 2019)
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:13 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

That's why their fungal mat is so big, it's full of secrets.
posted by mrgoat at 3:43 PM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

I was just restraining myself from wondering about this over in the rat orgasm thread!
posted by aniola at 3:53 PM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

Metafilter: restraining ourselves from wondering about this over in the rat orgasm thread.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:11 PM on December 3, 2020 [7 favorites]

What are they sharing with one another?

Sourdough recipes and spicy memes, same as everybody else.
posted by darkstar at 4:28 PM on December 3, 2020 [7 favorites]

this was a pretty good X-Files episode
posted by secret about box at 4:32 PM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was just restraining myself from wondering about this over in the rat orgasm thread!

i would like to nominate this comment for this year's for Outstanding Comment Separate from Context award
posted by secret about box at 4:35 PM on December 3, 2020 [16 favorites]

Recipes.
posted by bz at 4:38 PM on December 3, 2020

“The old foresters were like, Why don’t you just study growth and yield?” Simard told me. “I was more interested in how these plants interact. They thought it was all very girlie.”

Ugh, the pat-tree-archy.
posted by dr_dank at 4:40 PM on December 3, 2020 [31 favorites]

mindworms. they're brewin' up some mindworms.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:49 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

"What are they sharing with one another?"

Who gets to drop a limb on the next person carrying a chainsaw

Thanks for posting Ahmad Khani

There are just so many studies exploring inter-plant/species/genus/order communication. Life has had so long to work on this I'd be surprised it wasn't happening. Most comms are facilitated by soil fungi and bacteria

The Fungal Fast Lane: Common Mycorrhizal Networks Extend Bioactive Zones of Allelochemicals in Soils - natural plant poisons.

'The herbivore–plant–mycorrhiza continuum' is fascinating too - I have a fulltext if anyone's interested.

Herbicides break (kill) many of these interactions, again have cites if anyone interested.
posted by unearthed at 5:14 PM on December 3, 2020 [9 favorites]

thank you, unearthed… most fitting name, too.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:19 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

The single scariest thing in The Lord of the Rings was the Huorns and also the most awesome
posted by Caxton1476 at 5:40 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Exploring How and Why Trees ‘Talk’ to Each Other [Yale]

We also started to understand that it’s not just resources moving between plants. It’s way more than that. A forest is a cooperative system, and if it were all about competition, then it would be a much simpler place. Why would a forest be so diverse? Why would it be so dynamic?

To me, using the language of communication made more sense because we were looking at not just resource transfers, but things like defense signaling and kin recognition signaling. The behavior of plants, the senders and the receivers, those behaviors are modified according to this communication or this movement of stuff between them.

posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:46 PM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's a countdown.
posted by biffa at 5:55 PM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

I saw a documentary film that said that the trees are plotting to release some sort of spores that will cause us all to kill ourselves in gruesome fashion. Perhaps that's it.
posted by Justinian at 6:04 PM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

They are sharing pictures of cats. Same as in town.
posted by srboisvert at 6:05 PM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

The tree underground scene has roots with a fun-guy/fun-gal.
posted by mundo at 7:32 PM on December 3, 2020

some sort of spores that will cause us all to kill ourselves in gruesome fashion

Seems a bit wasteful. Just persuading us all to be a bit nicer to trees would be a better use of their time.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 PM on December 3, 2020

They know what you did last summer.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:00 PM on December 3, 2020

mindworms. they're brewin' up some mindworms.

Congratulation! You have a fruit!
posted by Meatbomb at 8:53 PM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

Soil's Microbial Market Shows the Ruthless Side of Forests - "TED talks and bestselling books extol the benevolent, cooperative 'wood wide web' of subsurface organisms that communicate, share nutrients and sustain each other. Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at VU University Amsterdam, is at the vanguard of a new generation of scientists questioning that gauzy view. Through innovative and groundbreaking studies, Kiers and her collaborators have gathered evidence that plants and their fungal conspirators are not just cooperating with each other but also engaging in a raucous and often cutthroat marketplace ruled by supply and demand, where everyone is out to get the best deal for themselves and their kind."*
posted by kliuless at 9:22 PM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

PINE Is Not Elm.
posted by bartleby at 9:36 PM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

"Anybody got any gum?"
posted by bartleby at 9:37 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have no idea how these cats got wedged in the branches, or why.
posted by bartleby at 9:40 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I maybe think trees also communicate through their branches rubbing in the wind.
posted by hypnogogue at 10:08 PM on December 3, 2020

Shhh! We don't talk about that in polite hyphae.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 AM on December 4, 2020

It is clear that much of the popular science about fungi is not accurate and that claims are being overhyped. In particular, I think psychedelic evangelists have started to do this a lot in recent years.

It has recently been claimed that sub-space is full of it, but it can be harnessed for faster-than-light transportation.

I don't think this has been peer-reviewed though.
posted by rochrobbb at 4:12 AM on December 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

That was a beautiful article and the whole thing is so interesting. But the anthropomorphism on all sides kind of gets to me. (The biggest news for me was that Darwin was inspired by Adam Smith, so I guess anthropomorphism is built into modern biology from the outset). IMO it is more interesting when the findings challenge our notions of self and society, and how creatures are defined, as some of the people who study the human microbiome sometimes do. Paraphrasing: what if I am not one me, but a collective of organisms that roughly inhabit the same space.
posted by mumimor at 5:48 AM on December 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

There was an interesting bit in Entangled Life that flipped it around and looked at this in a "fungi-centric" way, rather than having trees as the focus. After all it's the fungi doing the transporting of nutrients- are the trees sharing, or is the fungi taking from the rich and sharing with the poor, thus making the overall system stronger? Then goes back to the "individual as a system" theme, of course.
posted by Jobst at 8:04 AM on December 4, 2020 [5 favorites]

"Creep."
posted by parmanparman at 8:17 AM on December 4, 2020

M. Night Shyamalan tried to warn us!
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:36 AM on December 4, 2020

Herbicides break (kill) many of these interactions, again have cites if anyone interested.

Yeah, this is one of the conundrums of restoration ecology: in order to restore ecosystems full of invasive plants, glyphosate is often the weapon of choice for eradication. Ecological restoration is not exactly a money making endeavor, so there's often very little in the way of human-power to remove invasive plants, and all too often a limited window in which to re-establish the natives. However in many cases the soil biota supported by non-natives is not the same as that supported by natives, and needs to be re-established as well. Regardless, the fact that glyphosate residue can show up in biomass the following season is not great, and it's not great for humans to be exposed to it.

I've been thinking about this a lot because we recently bought an acre of land in Blue Oak Woodland, in which the former owners extensively planted the hillside with Vinca major. It's not drought tolerant, it burns in a fire, and requires water to not just become half-dead tinder. It's not great for goats' digestion, so if I want to get rid of it from all these steep hillsides it's got to be killed somehow. The alternative is slowly killing the oaks and manzanita by watering, which is not an option.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:44 AM on December 4, 2020 [6 favorites]

I've been thinking about this a lot because we recently bought an acre of land in Blue Oak Woodland, in which the former owners extensively planted the hillside with Vinca major. It's not drought tolerant, it burns in a fire, and requires water to not just become half-dead tinder. It's not great for goats' digestion, so if I want to get rid of it from all these steep hillsides it's got to be killed somehow. The alternative is slowly killing the oaks and manzanita by watering, which is not an option.

I feel you. At our farm, someone at some time planted a lot of a sort of prunus (Prunus serotina), in the hope that it would path the way for more sustainable local species. They also imagined it would have a high value as furniture wood. But it is an invasive species and almost impossible to control; every time my grandparents cut down a forest area, it spread like a pest. That said, after I took over management, I've done selective thinning of the forest instead of clearcutting, and the prunus serontina doesn't get nearly as much of a footing in there, because it needs a lot of light. I still need to cut down and/or uproot the prunus serontina where it is, but it's such a relief to see it isn't spreading in the managed forest. So, my advice would be to plant and nourish something native while physically removing as much of the vinca major as you can.
posted by mumimor at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2020 [5 favorites]

I wonder what the fungi in the soil in my neighborhood is sharing with my neighbors.
posted by hrpomrx at 1:54 PM on December 4, 2020

I maybe think trees also communicate through their branches rubbing in the wind.

This possibility is raised in the Radio Lab podcast linked above… I won't spoil it for you, though!
posted by Ahmad Khani at 2:13 PM on December 4, 2020

Fungi’s Lessons for Adapting to Life on a Damaged Planet: Merlin Sheldrake in Conversation with Robert Macfarlane

Sheldrake: Mycelium used to feel like a kōan, unintelligible to my mammalian mind. But I’ve come to think of our minds as the most mycelial parts of ourselves. Mycelium is a living, growing, opportunistic investigation—speculation in bodily form. A portrait of someone’s mind might look something like a mycelial network; mind maps certainly do. It soon became clear that mycelium would be a foundational metaphor for the book whether I liked it or not. There were other guiding figures. Knots helped me a lot. Since I was a child I’ve loved tying and untying knots and the way it makes me think, and I often found myself imagining the book’s themes and stories as cords that I could splice, braid, and weave. Music was another, in particular musical polyphony, which involves voicing more than one part or telling more than one story at the same time. In polyphonic music, melodies intertwine without ceasing to be many. Voices flow around other voices, twisting into and beside one another.

The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web: In London’s Epping Forest, a scientist named Merlin eavesdrops on trees’ underground conversations

The implications of the Wood Wide Web far exceed this basic exchange of goods between plant and fungi, however. The fungal network also allows plants to distribute resources—sugar, nitrogen, and phosphorus—between one another. A dying tree might divest itself of its resources to the benefit of the community, for example, or a young seedling in a heavily shaded understory might be supported with extra resources by its stronger neighbors. Even more remarkably, the network also allows plants to send one another warnings. A plant under attack from aphids can indicate to a nearby plant that it should raise its defensive response before the aphids reach it. It has been known for some time that plants communicate above ground in comparable ways, by means of airborne hormones. But such warnings are more precise in terms of source and recipient when sent by means of the myco-net.

posted by Ahmad Khani at 2:17 PM on December 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

Love when people are committed to a topic like this.
posted by karenfayad at 12:46 AM on December 5, 2020