#mycorrhizae

[appliedscientist]

This Is Where AM Fungi Really Belong!

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi play a far greater role in ecosystems than previously believed. This video explores their true ecological niche, revealing how AM fungi form vital symbiotic relationships with plant roots, enhance nutrient uptake, and shape soil health. Discover where these remarkable fungi truly belong in the natural world—and why understanding their habitat and function could transform sustainable agriculture and ecosystem restoration.

9th Edition of Applied Scientist Awards | 27-28 October 2025 | Paris, France

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[biology-geology-beaches-india]

The Science Research Diaries of S. Sunkavally, p383.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Bizarre question for worldbuilding: what kind of fungus would be best at interfacing with electronics? Whether that be actively picking up and transmitting signals or just wiring itself into a keyboard and manipulating it that way; it's a librarian, so I don't have to be picky. I was thinking a cordyceps, but if you have better ideas, I am all (wood) ears!

@specsthespectraldragon Honestly, I think any mycorrhizal fungus would work. The mycorrhizal network of fungal mycelium is already thought to function as a communication network among trees and other plants (though to what degree is debatable.) The signals in a mycorrhizae are chemical rather than electric; there's some evidence for plants sending electrical signals, but I believe that's largely between different parts of one plant rather than among multiple individuals.

Of course, you're working within a fictional setting, so feel free to mess about with this as much as you want. If your world's scientists have discovered that plants evolved ways to extend their electrical signalling capabilities to the mycorrhizae through the fungal mycelium, I think that would be a perfectly reasonable bit of science fiction to toss in there.

Good luck with your project; it sounds like a lot of fun!

[probably-a-real-lichen]

Goes without saying that I'm hopelessly dependent on the blue spaghetti

[bees-with-swords]

The trees don't "help" each other. They don't "decide" to let the fungus in. All they know is that when they call for help, the fungus answers. Without the fungus, they'd be nothing. It's like if a government was part of your body. It's the closest thing they have to a god. Isn't there something horrifying about that, deep down. God exists and you can't escape it. God exists and you can't live without it. God exists and spends every day ensuring that your brother's blood flows through your veins. Deep, deep in your DNA, there is a pact that links you all to the beast underground.

[dustedmagazine]

Mycorrhizae — The Great Filtration (Big Bovine Industrial Wastes)

Given its associations with fungi, Mycorrhizae might seem like a name better suited to a death metal band, and the damper and danker, the better. But Travis Minnick’s Mycorrhizae is a black metal project, and when you listen to The Great Filtration, the moniker begins to make some sense. The speed with which fungal lifeforms grow, the flying clouds of tiny spores, the rhizomic proliferation of underground shoots and channels — all that stuff gets registered in Mycorrhizae’s rapidly whirring, buzzing, sinuous sound. It’s simultaneously raw and unexpectedly canorous, rich and fetid and weirdly brittle. Like the taste of a dried candy cap mushroom, Mycorrhizae’s music is layered and complex.

The more complicated question is how seriously we’re supposed to take this stuff. The video Minnick has created for “Strength in Space” is appealingly bananas, and tonally inscrutable. Two dudes in camo and Ghillie suits, one of them snow white, run through dense forest and lovingly shred on their guitars. Are they collecting some shrooms? Stocking up for the apocalypse? Just generally taking the piss? This reviewer sort of loves the way the video plays it straight and, through its sheer, unblinking enthusiasm, seems to undercut its own gravid weightiness.

The music has the same force. It moves at an unflagging top gear, full of riffage and wide-eyed ideas; but it all flies by so quickly that it can be hard to track, and by the sixth song on The Great Filtration (a terrific tune called “Unwielding”), it’s a bit exhausting. That may be part of the band’s symbolic gambit. The deep microbial, organic processes of mycorrhizae are also relentless, remarkable for their energies, essential to life even as their fungoid nature signals dark, cold, underground properties that make us think of death. In that way, Mycorrhizae captures some of the most provoking ambiguities of black metal: it wants to be subterranean, shadowy and dead, but its very essentials render the music vigorous, and very much alive.

Jonathan Shaw

[turtlesandfrogs]

Can I use mycorrhizal fungi in potted plants?

Sorry I missed this until just now, but the answer is yes, assuming the plant species are compatible. A lot of research on mycorrhizae is done in pots:

You'll want to verify the plant's mycorrhizal status, which is relatively easy to do with this list: https://mycorrhizae.com/mycorrhizal-status-of-plant-families-and-genera/

[turtlesandfrogs]

So on dendryte's suggestion, I read a paper called "Feed your friends: do plant exudates shape the root microbiome?", and it is awesome and filled with ideas that were new to me, and all in all was very exciting. Like, I didn't even know about/remember border cells, and they apparently do a whole lot! I'm back from work now, so now I'm going to share the Questions I have, and am going to spend the weekend looking for sources on:

1. As crop rotation was developed for a tilled, monoculture system as a way to address the disease issues that pop up in such a system, is crop rotation actually beneficial in a no-till, truly polyculture setting where care is taken to support mycorrhizae?

As we know know that plants alter the population of bacteria in the soil, and that these population compositions differ between plant species, is it possible that there might be some benefits to planting the same crop in the same location if you're not disrupting microbe populations through tilling?

2. Since we know that applications of nitrogen can cause plants to kick out their symbiotic fungal partners, increasing their vulnerability to pathogenic fungi & drought, might it be better to place fertilizer outside of the root zone so as to force the plant to use the mycelium to get at it?

How far can mycorrhizal networks transport mineral nutrients? Are they capable of transporting all the mineral nutrients plants need? In other words, can I make a compost pile in the middle of the garden and be lazy and depend on the fungal network to distribute the goods?

3. How deep can fungal hyphe go? In other words, in areas with shallow wells, and thus fairly shallow water tables, can we encourage mycorrhizae enough to be able to depend on them for irrigation?

4. For folks on city water, does the chlorine effect plants' microbiome both above and below ground?

5. When do plants start producing exudates? If you had soil from around actively growing plants of the same species you're sowing, could the bacteria and fungi play a role in early seedling vigor & health?

6. Has anyone directly compared the micronutrient profiles of the same crop grown in organic but tilled settings against those grown in no-till, mycorrhizae-friendly settings?

7. Since we know that larger molecules, such as sugar, can be transported across fungal networks between different species (Suzanne Simard is where I first food this info) , have we checked for other compounds created by plants? Say, compounds used by plants to protect against insect herbivory?

8. Since we know blueberries use ericoid mycorrhizae rather than endo- or ectomycorrhizae (which are the two types used by most plants), but gaultheria (salal & winter green) use both ericoid & ectomycorrhizae, and alder uses both endo & ectomycorrhizae (and fix nitrogen too!), and clover use endomycorrhizae, might blueberries be more productive if there's a nearby hedge of salal/wintergreen, alder, and clover? Willows and aspens also both use endo & ecto, so they could be included, and the trees could also be coppiced for firewood or basketry supplies.

I'm going to spend some time this weekend reading research papers. If anyone happens to know any that address these (or related questions), please send them my way!