Ethereal New Plant Species Doesn't Use Photosynthesis
Jan 2, 2023 22:35:53 GMT
politicidal and Sarge like this
Post by dividavi on Jan 2, 2023 22:35:53 GMT
To whet your appetites for more, here are two sections from the ScienceAlert article:
You may note the link for the words warn each other of predators and wonder how plants and fungae warn about anything. It's explained at the linked article from Annals of Botany. Fascinating stuff.
Wood wide webs – incredible networks of fungi and plant roots that span entire forests – act as highways for nutrient deliveries as well as wires for transferring information between plants via electrical and chemical signals. These connections help strengthen a forest as a whole by distributing resources from nutrient-rich to nutrient-poor areas of the network. They also allow plants to warn each other of predators and even help protect them from drought.
In exchange for these services, plants pay their fungi allies with some of the hydrocarbons they produce using photosynthesis.
But Monotropastrum betrays this mutualistic relationship by stealing all its nutrients from the fungi, offering no photosynthetic products to the network in return – making them part of a very selective mycoheterotrophic club.
But Monotropastrum betrays this mutualistic relationship by stealing all its nutrients from the fungi, offering no photosynthetic products to the network in return – making them part of a very selective mycoheterotrophic club.
You may note the link for the words warn each other of predators and wonder how plants and fungae warn about anything. It's explained at the linked article from Annals of Botany. Fascinating stuff.
