You might picture brokers shouting at each other on Wall Street's stock exchange floor when you think of trade and market relations. It seems that fungi quietly perform one of the fundamental functions of a free marketplace.A Rice University economist has discovered that certain networks of fungi engage in a complex economic theory when they trade nutrients for carbon with host plants. This could help to understand carbon storage in soils and aid in mitigating climate change.An online research paper titled "Walrasian equilibrium behaviour in nature" can be found. It will appear in the upcoming issue of Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. Ted Loch-Temzelides is a Rice professor of economics, and holds the George and Cynthia Mitchell Chairs in Sustainable Development. He examined data from ecological experiments on arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Networks, which are connected to plants and facilitate trading of carbon for nutrients, through an economic lens.Loch-Temzelides discovered that these relationships are similar to how economists view competitive markets, also known as Walrasian. This paper shows that Walrasian equilibrium can be used to study trade in this "biological" market. It is a key concept in economic theory of markets and used to predict future events.Loch-Temzelides stated that organisms like fungi are not self-sacrificing and can display competitive behavior similar to those in markets involving sophisticated human participants.This finding suggests that market participants are given the best resources -- in this instance, plants and fungi.Loch-Temzelides stated that "mycorrhizal networks in the world sequester approximately 5 billion tons of carbon each year." The ability to manipulate the terms of trade to make carbon from host plants less expensive than nutrients could result in additional carbon being stored in soil. This could be a major benefit in combating climate change.Loch-Temzelides believes that future research by economists and biologists can help to better understand these interactions.
