Threads of underground fungal networks are long enough to reach beyond the Solar System
The study only covers living arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, Stewart said, and doesn’t include dead fungal networks, which also help to store carbon and add to the total biomass and influence of the networks on ecosystems. Research into dead fungal networks is still being explored.
The study also found where these networks are most threatened. Fungal network densities across croplands are about half of what they are in wild ecosystems. Meanwhile, wild grassland ecosystems hold about 40 percent of the world’s arbuscular mycorrhizal biomass. Yet those grasslands are among Earth’s least protected ecosystems, and they are converted into farmland at four times the rate of forests, posing a potential threat to these networks and the benefits they bring to plant life and carbon storage.
Previous research from SPUN has found 90 percent of fungal communities across the globe are unprotected, and many ecosystems, like the deserts of the American...
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