It’s a recurring theme, some scientific research is published and is leaped upon by the mainstream media and those people for whom it confirms previously held beliefs. For the most part this latter group haven’t heard about confirmation bias.
Different interpretations of quantum mechanics, the left/right brain hemispheres and most recently the so-called world wide wood. Early studies in any field can reveal things theretofore unknown or unrecognised, later studies will either confirm or repudiate the study. The subsequent studies that confirm an effect will often also be more precise about the quantity and quality of the studied effect. For a while now, since the first results demonstrated flows happening along mycelial networks ‘sharing’ substances between different types of plants, particularly trees, people have been and still are enraptured by this vision of an underground caring sharing community.
Almost inevitably new studies are showing a much more nuanced picture, these studies won’t receive the media hype and will be ignored by many people as they don’t confirm or go in the same direction as their preconceived notions.
So what about the caring sharing world wide wood then and the ‘mother-tree’ hypothesis? Well it’s maybe not at all as caring and sharing as one hears. The idea that has been promoted is that the older trees, given the appealing name ‘mother-trees’ share substances with younger trees via the mycelial network. Information is said to flow along the same network and younger trees can ‘appal’ to older trees for a boost of carbon or nutrients. This information received the older trees send a dose of the substance needed back to the younger tree. However : "We found that mycorrhizal networks are indeed essential for the stability of many forest ecosystems, but rarely through sharing and caring among trees. Rather, it works like a trading ground for individual trees and fungi, each trying to make the best deal to survive," explains Oskar Franklin
This recent study shows that the picture is much less caring/sharing than journalists and bloggers have portrayed. In fact there is little research that directly supports a ‘mother tree’ hypothesis and no evidence that supports the media/blogger idea that this hypothesis is ‘fact’. We are so often driven to see the world in a binary way, on/off, black/white when in fact the world is much more subtle than that. Cooperation V competition is another binary interpretation that one often comes across. With our current understandings there is evidence for cooperative interactions and also competitive ones in between different members of an ecosystem, there are also interactions such as commensalism, amensalism, parasitism. There are undoubtedly forms of interaction we don’t yet see or understand. Something that is also the case with inter-species interactions is that they can be time or life stage variable. Caterpillars and butterflies would be an example of this.
Binary thinking, which is all too common, leads us away from a more beautiful, elegant and deeper understanding of inter-species interactions and also gives us deformed opinions about a long list of different subjects concerning human affairs. My football team/political party good, your team/political party bad. My country good/your country bad and so on and so forth. This latter notion, which seems so well loved by certain politicians is a brake on progress. For example how can it be logically possible that a country like the UK which has very high prisoner recidivism rates won’t take a glimpse across the Channel and learn from neighbouring countries that have much lower rates?
About 20 years ago I remember a study showing that challenging playgrounds were much more attractive to young people than the banal, anodyne ones we typically see. The country in which the research was done started to build more challenging playgrounds and it all worked out pretty well. About a year ago I read virtually the exact same thing about another country who, based on a study done in said country decided , 20 years after the first country, to install challenging playgrounds. These two countries share a land frontier, they are neighbours.
For us as human beings we discovered long ago that cooperation between members of a group was the best way to survive and thrive. Any person who deviate from the survival based group norms would be mocked and if their potentially ‘harmful to the group’ behaviour continued they would be excluded. Since the paradigm changed and competition came to be the base of our economies and political systems we have been indoctrinated to believe that competition is what fuels technological and social progress. The idea that had we cooperated we would have advanced faster, further and in a better direction goes unheeded by law makers, industry leaders and most of the public, which is a shame and an obscene waste.