MERLIN SHINDRAKE

Our newest research on plant-fungal trade was published in Nature. The work, led by a team of scientists from Vrije Universiteit, Princeton University, SPUN and AMOLF combines robotics, mycology and biophysics to reveal underground supply-chain dynamics.   Together, we built an imaging robot that allowed us to gather 100 years' worth of microscope data in under 3 years.  With the robot, we tracked half a million fungal highways and the traffic flows within them and used this data to describe how plants and symbiotic fungi build intricate supply chains, adapting their routes for maximum efficiency.  The study helps us explore how mycorrhizal fungi move billions of tons of CO2e into underground ecosystems each year. These new techniques open the door to exciting future research into the ways that these living, sensing, networks regulate ecosystem function and the Earth's nutrient cycles.
 

Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic  mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and fungi comprise an ancient life-support system that easily qualifies as one of the wonders of the living world. Yet climate change strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts overlook fungi and focus overwhelmingly on animals and plants. This is a problem: the destruction of underground fungal networks accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss and interrupts vital global nutrient cycles.  In this session, Merlin Sheldrake, the biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our World, drives home just how critically important fungi are and discuss the visionary work of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and its efforts to map and protect the mycorrhizal fungal communities of the planet. He also presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks.