The Effect of Fungi on Forests

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This was the first experiment that showed trees could swap carbon in an actual forest, not just in a lab. It's become one of those papers that people cite over and over again. If trees of totally different species could be sharing resources, it means that trees might be more cooperative than scientists originally thought. Gabriel: The wood wide web has taken off in a way that science about this stuff rarely does.

Studies suggesting trees communicate through an elaborate underground fungal network have captured imaginations. It’s a beautiful idea, but the fantasy may have gotten ahead of the science.

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