The Interplay between Structure and Function in Fungal Networks

Abstract

Saprotrophic woodland fungi form self-organised transport networks as they forage for resources across the forest floor. These networks adapt during de-velopment by selective reinforcement of major transport routes and recycling of the intervening redundant mycelium to support further extension. The predicted transport performance of the resulting weighted networks show im-proved efficiency in comparison to evenly weighted networks with the same topology, or standard reference networks. Experimental measurement of nu-trient movement using radiotracers and scintillation imaging show that fluxes are more dynamic, with synchronised oscillations and switching between dif-ferent pre-existing routes. The same structures that confer good transport efficiency also show good resilience to both simulated damage and experimen-tal attack by grazing insects, with persistence of a centrally connected core. We argue that fungi grow as self-organised planar spatial networks, honed by evolution, which may exemplify potential solutions to real-world compro-mises between search strategy, transport efficiency, resilience and cost.