Mycorrhizal Networks, Plant Interdependence, and the Politics of Naming

A forest is a system of relationships

Ecology (Mycorrhizae):

• Mycorrhizae is a facilitating exchange (not just gifts)

  • it extends the plants access to soil resources

  • plants supply photosynthetically derived carbon while the fungi supply mineral nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen

  • the fungal hyphae forage beyond the immediate root zone and can alter plants resistance for tolerance to stress

  • reciprocal relationship (but its costs and benefits vary based on partner and environmental conditions)

  • this is a network (not just pairs)

    • many mycorrhizal fungi are not host specific (one fungal individual can colonize roots of multiple plants)

    • networks can link plants of the same or diff species (and plants at diff life stages)

  • what things can we test and how do we frame them to obtain and read evidence

  • Do mycorrhizal networks facilitate growth in plant communities? (Van der heijden & horton (2009))

    • try’s to answer these questions:

      • do all plants benefit from it

      • does the support for plants depend on plant size, age, dominance

      • how do networks alter competition and community dynamics

Facilitation:

• facilitation is conditional

  • low soil fertility → increase the value of fungal nutrient acquisition

  • high soil fertility → benefits may disappear (fungal carbon demanded can even reduce plant growth)

  • a fungus can be mutualistic with one host and parasitic towards another

  • seedling and adult plants need not receive equal benefits

    • perhaps there are a signals that determine what kind of plant gets what kinds of benefits/effects

  • networks may facilitate recruitment by allowing seedlings to become colonized by an already established mycelium

  • what counts as a common mycorrhizal network?

    • broader CMN def: a network formed by at least one mycorrhizal fungal genet interacting (colonizing or growing in close proximity to) roots of >_ 2 plants, irrespective of the connection type

  • Hierarchy

    • CFN - Common fungal network: …

    • CMN - Common mycorrhizal network: …

    • CMN-HC - CMN with hyphal continuity: …

  • Direct CMN-HC: …

  • Indirect CMN: …

  • 
    

Reassessment:

Language:

• a monoculture of justice

  • procedural justice, virtue justice, and linguistic justice

  • “language itself is ethical and political; it is not just a vehicle for ethics”

• naming as world-making

  • an apple at US customs is named many things in succession: agricultural product, offending item, security threat, invasive species, choking hazard

    • each name is performative and does something (it does not merely describe)

    • each name calls forth a different world and a different relation

  • language is “as powerful as pulling a gun, putting a needle in an arm, grafting trees, or building nuclear plants” (p.150)

  • our language creates worlds

    • ex) when talking supply and demand, everything becomes a commodity (using economic language turns everything into a commodity, have monetary value etc.)

• the Douglas fir: “carrier” and the double name

  • douglas fir tree referred to as a “carrier” by one and as “there is a body”

    • these names make the tree different things: a vector, a body, a greeting, a history etc.

• enframing and standing reserve

  • Danger: the measurement is false

  • what kind of trees, what kind of forest will we see if we think about purely carbon capture

    • fast growing trees like eucalyptus

    • reforestation efforts will often only want to reforest for the sake of carbon capture so they will choose to plant very fast growing trees instead of native species to actually restore the forest, and these new “forests” are entirely made of eucalyptus and are more like machines to store carbon than actual forests because there is minimal biodiversity, native species etc. (its sole purpose is to capture carbon)

• Linguistic injustice and the non human

  • the term “nonhuman animal” seems inclusive but it actually reproduces "a pathologically distorted frame” of the natural world

    • it is a single catch-all that overlooks “the infinite space that separates the lizard from the dog, the protozoan from the dolphin”

  • Linguistic injustice is about the world a vocabulary makes available and the worlds is forcloses

  • solution: to practice linguistic responsibility to remain accountable for what each vocabulary reveals and suppresses

    • NOT to abandon scientific naming

• What happens when we use “wood-wide web”?

  • the metaphor foregrounds connection, communication, cooperation, and helps audiences notice below-ground interdependence

  • BUT “web” and “socialism” can suggest a coherent collective, equitable sharing, or benevolent intention that is not established in the research

    • the evidence points to multiple pathways, asymmetries, context dependence, and sometimes weak or undetectable effects

  • Following the Houle:

    • Do not abandon metaphor or measurement

    • Use metaphor / measurement responsibly, and remain accountable for what they make visible and what they foreclose

Conclusions:

questions:

• 1: no

• 2: tracing radioactive phosphate or water balance

•