Toby Kiers and a group of experts hiked the Apennine mountains in northern Italy in July of last year, when the country was experiencing its worst dry spell in decades. The burned forests and dried vegetation of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna were seen as a unique learning opportunity by an evolutionary Biologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
A group of people with rubber mallets and tape were looking at a life form beneath their feet.
The goal is to track how the community is changing under climate change. Predicting what we need to protect and conserve will be possible thanks to it.
The fruiting bodies of mushrooms are the ones that take on many shapes and sizes. She wanted to know more about theycorrhizal networks that live below ground.
Mycorrhizal networks are made up of white thread-like strands and are thought to play a number of ecological roles, including helping with the absorption and retention of water, protecting plants against pathogens, and holding the soil together. The system is so interwoven that it is sometimes referred to as the "wood-wide web"
It's still unclear if and how these webs help trees flourish, but Kiers believes that studying these underground networks in such stark conditions could help scientists identify drought- resistant fungi that can help crops thrive and shield plants from the consequences of rapidly rising temperatures
According to Paola Bonfante, a former professor of plant biology at the University of Turin, these fungi can act as biofertilisers, taking in some of the plant's essential elements and giving them to the plant.
Scientists can use the research to anticipate how climate change will affect communities. Many European countries, including Spain, Greece and Portugal, experienced devastatingly hot summers last year with raging fires.
The initiative is part of a larger project by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks to collect more than 10,000 samples of fungi from around the world. GlobalFungi and the Crowther Lab are working with the executive director of Spun to use satellite and big-data analyses to identify mycorrhizal networks in the area.
In Italy, the team took samples from a variety of trees, including pine, beech, chestnut and hazelnut, as well as different locations. For comparison, samples were taken from a location that had not been affected by fire, and one that had been burnt. Is it possible that mycorrhizal networks could survive the fire?
The team poured the contents of the tubes into plastic bags and took the samples. Sub samples were put into plastic tubes and labeled with their location.
In the future, Kiers would like to return to these sites and compare them with those in more warm climates. She wants to come back in a year, in two years, and study the recovery process.
The samples have been sent to two plant biologists at the university. They will conduct genetic testing that will allow them to find out what organisms were underground.
About 600 of the estimated 2.2- 3.8m species of fungi on Earth have been evaluated. Half of them are threatened.
The person says they are definitely worried. The ultimate goal is to say that this is valuable diversity as well.
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The findings will give researchers a better idea of which genes lend fungi their resilience.
We know a lot about fungi, but mostly what happens in a petri dish
When under stress, some mycelium have flame-retardant properties and others become more efficient. Bonfante says that they know that mycorrhizal fungi that mingle with crops are more resistant to dry weather than those that associate with the roots of large forest trees.
Cryomyces antarcticus is a fungus that has high levels of melanin in its cells. DrClaudia Coleine, a microbiologist at the University of Tuscia, in Viterbo, near Rome, says that melatonin, the same substance that makes human skins more or less dark and protects against ultraviolet radiation, can help protect fungi from fire.
She says that they are beginning to understand the mechanisms that allow fungi to survive.
Bonfante says that laboratory tests alone won't suffice. She says they know a lot about what happens in a petri dish.
Our understanding ofycorrhizal networks is limited because they are so interwoven with other organisms. She says that scientists will need to find a way to bridge the gap between the two worlds.
The man agrees. If we don't understand what's happening underground and how they're influencing what we care about, like chestnut trees and flowers and bees and honey, we're missing a huge part of the picture.
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