Toby Kiers tracks plant-fungal trade networks

EC50 2024 honoree, Toby Kiers and coauthors have published a study detailing how mycorrhizal fungi build networks to trade carbon and nutrients with plants that help regulate the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems.

Toby and the international research team built a custom-designed robot that captures time-lapse imaging of fungal nodes simultaneously to monitor the construction of living trade networks between mycorrhizal fungi. They found that the fungi construct a lace-like mycelial network that moves carbon to-and-from plant roots using a system of two-way traffic, with the ability to control flow speed and width of these fungal highways to meet their needs for nutrients.

Their findings illustrate a symbiotic supply-chain network shaped by millions of years of natural selection.

Rendering courtesy of VU Amsterdam/AMOLF/SPUN

Through their dynamic mapping of networks, the study team observed that the fungi grow special branches that explore new territory and will prioritize growing further to reach potential trading partners that offer a greater return on nutrients than those partners that are close by. They also observed that the fungi grows to add loops to the branch structure to shorten paths to potential new root systems.

The study raises new questions, such as ‘how do mycorrhizal fungi control nutrient flows despite their widely distributed anatomy?’ and whether this bidirectional network anatomy can ‘inform human-built supply chain architectures’?

Toby reflects, “You know that sense of awe you get when you look up into the night sky? That is the same sense we get from studying what is happening in the underground. It’s like a mixture of wonder, excitement, and total disbelief.”

The full study by Toby Kiers and her co-authors can be found in Nature here.

Learn more about Toby Kiers, EC50 Class of 2024, and the rest of the members of the EC50 here.