Mycorrhizal fungi: The Hidden Networks beneath our Feet

by Emily Magkourilou (University of Sheffield). If you’ve been watching David Attenborough’s BBC series ‘Wild Isles’, you’ll already know that our woodlands are home to largely unseen, but amazingly complex underground networks of fungal threads, which associate themselves with tree roots in a symbiotic relationship that benefits both. And it’s even been suggested that trees can use this mycorrhizal network to send messages to each other, in a co-operative arrangement colloquially dubbed ‘the wood-wide web’. But does the evidence actually support it? Emily, our speaker today, is currently researching the functionality of fungal networks for her PhD in Soil Ecology, so she’s ideally placed to reveal what’s really going on right under our feet.

To view the recording, click here… ‘Mycorrhizal Fungi’ video

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