Out of sight, below the soil's surface, fungi play a vital role in the existence and health of our forests, woodlands, jungles, and prairies.
The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. According to the fossil record, plants took their first steps onto land 500 million years ago. They hadn't yet evolved roots or vascular tissues, and they possessed anatomies more suited for buoyancy than gravity. While they eventually adapted into the diverse array of flora we know today, early botanical pioneers were largely ill-equipped for life out of—or far from—water. Thankfully for them, their transition onto land wasn't done alone. Fungi appear in the fossil record long before land plants emerge, and they served as important partners needed for plant survival on land. They played the role of a rudimentary root system, helping many early plants absorb water and nutrients from the barren soils of our ancient earth. In exchange, plants rewarded these fungi with the energy-rich carbon they produce through photosynthesis. As time went on, this relationship between plant and fungus grew intimate and co-dependent. Our planet's soils are one of Earth's largest carbon reservoirs, storing more carbon than all living plants and the atmosphere combined. In fact, most modern plants still aren't that great at absorbing nutrients on their own. More than 90 percent of plant species still depend on mutualistic fungi today. Likewise, these fungi are also dependent on their plant hosts. They're so specialized in foraging for nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus to "trade" with their host for carbon that they have largely lost their ability to acquire carbon from traditional sources like wood, leaves, and other organic materials. It's almost as if they've lost their ability to chew and digest solid food, so they derive energy rich carbon via an IV connected to the plant. This saves them from having to compete for carbon with other fungi and bacteria, of which there are plenty. These mutualistic fungi are more properly known as mycorrhizal fungi. Derived from Greek, mycorrhiza translates to "fungus root."…