“Fungi are
everywhere, but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They
sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are
changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than one billion
years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and
killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making
medicines, manipulating animal behavior and influencing the composition of the
Earth’s atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the plants on which we
live and the ways we think, feel and behave. Yet they live their lives hidden
from view, and more than ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.”
Merlin Sheldrake
If these words catch your attention, you are
not alone. It is the first paragraph of the book Entangled Life, a
fascinating exploration of the life of fungi. Did you know that you have more
microorganisms in your body than human cells? Some of those microorganisms are fungi. Fungi
are everywhere; they are not only present in our bodies. They are in the
clouds, influencing the weather. They are on the sea floor, on the surface of
deserts, in the frozen valleys of Antarctica, in the soil under our feet. They have the
capacity to adapt to different habitats. The ecosystems of microorganisms in our
bodies help us to digest food, to nourish us, to support our immune system, and
may even influence our behaviors (check references 1 and 2 at the bottom of
this post). These
interactions are not unique to humans. Even bacteria have viruses within them,
and viruses can contain smaller viruses.
Fungi
are neither plants nor animals. Plants make up 80% of the mass of life on earth
and they are the base of the food chain. However, 600 million years ago, there
were no plants on land. Back then, life was an aquatic event and there was no
soil as we know it now; only rocks, where minerals were locked. Merlin
Sheldrake explains that “plants made it out of the water around 500 million
years ago because of their collaboration with fungi, which served as their root
systems for tens of millions of years until plants could evolve their own.”
Here is a surprising fact that is often
overlooked: ninety percent of plants depend on fungi to survive and thrive. The
intimate partnerships between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi allow the plant
to take in water and minerals from the soil. Fungi also provide 80 percent of a
plant’s nitrogen and a hundred percent of its phosphorus. Likewise, the fungi
benefit from the plants by gaining access to food produced by the plant.
Mycorrhizal fungi are connected to plants and trees through shared networks.
“Mykes” in Greek means fungus; “rhiza” means roots.
Unsustainable agricultural practices ignore
these vital relationships between plants and fungi. Did you know that a
teaspoon of healthy soil contains more bugs than human beings in the planet? Fungi
represent at least one third of the living mass in the soil. The role of fungi
in soil ecosystems is an active field of research. Fungi networks in the soil
prevent the loss of nutrients in it, and help to regulate the water, so they
support the soil under extreme weather conditions that lead to droughts or floods.
The levels of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, climate changes and pollution influence the interactions between
plant roots and mycorrhizae, and the effects have an impact on ecosystems. A
study published in 2018 found that the deterioration of the health of trees
across Europe was the consequence of a disruption of their mycorrhizal relationships,
which was triggered by nitrogen pollution.
The term “mycorrhiza” was coined by biologist
Albert Frank in 1885; his study of lichens, symbiotic partnerships of fungi and
algae, led to the use of the word “symbiosis”. Frank’s passion for the study of
mycorrhiza spurred him to focus on the research of mycorrhizal relationships
for more than a decade; back then, other scientists opposed his ideas on
symbiosis as some kind of “sentimental illusion” that could not materialize in
nature.
Reading Entangled Life is akin to climbing a
tree. The higher you ascend, the more views and perspectives you gain. As you
clamber up a branch, more questions arise, and the adventure of knowledge
guides you to embrace how everything is deeply interconnected to function
within the delicate web of life.
Merlin
Sheldrake shares his wonder for fungi in Entangled Life the way Sara Dykman
explores the life of Monarch butterflies in “Bicycling with Butterflies. They
both captivate us with creativity, facts and artistry.
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and a writer.
He received a Ph.D. in Tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work
on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a
predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He
is also a musician. You can visit his website here:
References
1) 1) https://asm.org/Articles/2021/October/Addressing-Systematic-Barriers-in-Human-Microbiome
2) 2) https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/news/fungi-play-critical-role-within-our-gut-microbiome-research-finds
4) 4) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00292/full
