Refuting the reality of a "Wood Wide Web" (Scientific American)

[fyzygy]

Reductionism to the rescue ... 

 

Quote

A somewhat romantic idea has crept into both scientific and popular culture: that forests are cooperative places, where trees communicate or interact with each other through underground networks of fungi, called mycorrhizal networks. Researchers conducted a review of the evidence for interactions via fungi and found inconsistent results and weak testing methodology.  Why this matters: In forests, individual selection favors competition, with trees vying for resources in a way that would prevent group benefits. Tree cooperation, as suggested by some tree scientists, goes against those principles.   What the experts say: This controversy is fascinating because “it’s an example of people wanting to project their own values into nature and of them wanting to see in nature a model for human behavior,” says Kathryn Flynn, a plant community ecologist at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio.

 

[Freakosystem]

I'm not sure I think the romanticised altruistic pottayal of the WWW is objective reality either.

 

You can get complex systems out of individuals doing what's best for themselves. Isn't that what people tend to do?

 

Where one person sees a fungus transferring photosynthates from a large established tree to a week smaller one as an intelligent decision motivated by altruism, others (including myself) think it's more likely best for the individual to sustain a small weak tree by supplying some nutritional needs than it is to allow other species (initially parasitic species then decomposers) to utilise that resource and outcompete the first individual.

 

Again, this is how most if not all ecosystems work. Competition between individuals, competition between species and competition between ecosystems. This produces complexity and buffers runaway positive feedback mechanisms which would reduce ecosystem complexity.

Edited January 17 by Freakosystem

[saguaro]

 

3 hours ago, Freakosystem said:

Where one person sees a fungus transferring photosynthates from a large established tree to a week smaller one as an intelligent decision motivated by altruism, others (including myself) think it's more likely best for the individual to sustain a small weak tree by supplying some nutritional needs than it is to allow other species (initially parasitic species then decomposers) to utilise that resource and outcompete the first individual.

 

I agree, especially considering the mycorrhizal carbon supply is surplus to permit growth and fruiting.  Most mycorrhizal fungi are in obligate association with the trees and have limited capacity for saprotrophy. There isn't a cost for promiscuous association with multiple trees, it is a hedge against a host dying.

 

This is without even taking into account that many trees, especially in Nth American conifer forest, are obligate ectomycorrhizal symbionts.

Edited January 18 by saguaro

[fyzygy]

7 hours ago, Freakosystem said:

Isn't that what people tend to do?

Yes, but the charge being laid against the romanticists is precisely that ... of anthropomorphism. The fact that late-capitalist subjects see an iron law of competition (of nature red in tooth and claw; a merciless struggle for existence) could be, by the same token, a symptomatic extrapolation of existing economic and social relations (including a reflection of scientific research cultures). Yet the phenomenon of "mutual aid" is an observable fact, even among human societies: competition and cooperation are complementary aspects of an evolutionary biological process. Perhaps further research is needed, rather than settling back into Darwinian fundamentalisms, and either/or dualisms: competition and cooperation.