Mapping of Fungal Networks

Subject – Environment

Context – Scientists to map fungal networks, determine climate role

Concept –

Scientists from the United States and Europe announced plans to create the biggest map of underground fungal networks, arguing they are an important but overlooked piece in the puzzle of how to tackle climate change.
By working with local communities around the world the researchers said they will collect 10,000 DNA samples to determine how the vast networks that fungi create in the soil are changing as a result of human activity — including global warming.
Fungi are invisible ecosystem engineers, and their loss has gone largely unnoticed by the public.
Experts agree that tracking how fungal networks, also known as mycelia, are affected by climate change is important for protecting them — and ensure they can contribute to nature’s own mechanisms for removing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from the air.
Fungi can do this by providing nutrients that allow plants to grow faster, for example, or by storing carbon in the trillions of miles of root-like mass they themselves weave underground.
Some fungi actually produce carbon dioxide as they break down organic matter for food — potentially contributing to global warming if they release more CO2 into the atmosphere than they capture.

About Fungi –

Fungi are among the most primitive members of the plant kingdom. Study of the fungi is called mycology.
The fungi are non-chlorophylous, nucleated, non-vascular, thallophyticmicro organism and due to lack of chlorophyll they do not prepare their own food.
Fungi are eukaryotic organisms that include microorganisms such as yeasts, moulds and mushrooms. These organisms are classified under kingdom fungi.
They are classified as heterotrophs among the living organisms.
The fungi are among the thallophytes or plants with a thallus, which are simple plants, have no roots, stems, flowers and seeds- structures we commonly associate with higher plants.
The thallus of a fungus is usually made of branching threads called hyphae.