A Web of WHAT Connects The Trees in this Forest?!

Biologists set out to pin down the existence of a vast, underground network of fungi connecting trees in a forest. Here’s what they found.

Transcript

00:00Do trees have their own internet?

00:06It may sound wild, but an underground network of fungi may allow trees to communicate across vast distances.

00:12Such mycorrhizal networks could share resources, like water and nitrogen, as well as warnings about insect predators.

00:19A team of biologists from Canada and the U.S. made this the focus of their own myth-busting study,

00:24taking into account over 1,500 scientific papers and tallying up the number of claims based on flimsy evidence.

00:31The verdict? Such claims of a wood-wide web may in fact be overblown.

00:35While fungi are known to form interdependent relationships with trees by living within plant roots or in nearby soil,

00:41there's simply not enough evidence to indicate that vast, complex resource-sharing networks exist.

00:46To date, only five studies have been performed across only two forest types to map out the fungi and trees in a forest.

00:52While some positive results have been produced artificially, it's hard to rule out alternative explanations in such studies.

00:58The findings published in Nature Ecology and Evolution call for a more critical eye when it comes to submitting research.

01:04Let us devise new experiments, demand better evidence, think critically about alternative explanations for results,

01:10and become more selective with the claims we disseminate.

01:13If not, we risk turning the wood-wide web into a fantasy beneath our feet.

01:22of course.

01:23This team is prepared for instance.

01:24All the goodwill has had come, you know?

01:25We're not to do good, of course.

01:26From what I am, living with a natural habitat,

01:27you might have to do good yourself.

01:28We're not to do good yourself and do good yourself.

01:29We're not to do good yourself, it has to do good yourself.

01:31You might have to do good yourself.

01:32Really, we're not to do good yourself.

01:33You might be very proud of the fact.

01:34You might be a powerful tool of what you have done.

01:36You might try to pamphlet, but you can't have a good idea and be a great idea.

01:38You might be able to cure that the truth that you have done in your life.

01:41You may have discovered it last year,