A travelling-wave strategy for plant-fungal trade.

For nearly 450 million years, mycorrhizal fungi have constructed networks to collect and trade nutrient resources with plant roots. Owing to their dependence on host-derived carbon, these fungi face conflicting trade-offs in building networks that balance construction costs against geographical coverage and long-distance resource transport to and from roots. How they navigate these design challenges is unclear.

Mycorrhizal mycelium as a global carbon pool.

For more than 400 million years, mycorrhizal fungi and plants have formed partnerships that are crucial to the emergence and functioning of global ecosystems. The importance of these symbiotic fungi for plant nutrition is well established. However, the role of mycorrhizal fungi in transporting carbon into soil systems on a global scale remains under-explored.