* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Aziz Ansari made Keanu Reeves Indian food so he wouldn’t feel ‘freaked out’ directing him in Good Fortune (exclusive) – Entertainment Weekly

    Aziz Ansari Whips Up Indian Cuisine for Keanu Reeves to Ease Directing Jitters in Good Fortune

    Cassie Ventura welcomes third child – crossroadstoday.com

    Cassie Ventura Joyfully Welcomes Her Third Child!

    Drew Brees opens Surge Entertainment Center in Metairie hot spot for new businesses – NOLA.com

    Drew Brees Unveils Exciting New Surge Entertainment Center in Metairie!

    Will Gio Stay Or Go On May 27 General Hospital? – Yahoo

    Will Gio Make a Shocking Exit on May 27th’s General Hospital

    First look: Disney shows star villains, Little Mermaid, tech – Yahoo

    Unveiling Disney’s Dark Side: A Sneak Peek at Iconic Villains, The Little Mermaid, and Cutting-Edge Technology!

    Fans Call Out Disney For Cutting Favorite ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Character: ‘It Makes Me Want to Cry’ – Yahoo

    Disney Fans Heartbroken Over the Cut of Beloved ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Character: ‘It Makes Me Want to Cry

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Q1 2025 Quantum Technology Investment: What’s Driving the Surge in Quantum Investment? – The Quantum Insider

    Unleashing the Future: Exploring the Surge in Quantum Technology Investments for Q1 2025

    MIT Team Releases Tempting Report on Electric Aircraft Technology – AVweb

    MIT Team Releases Tempting Report on Electric Aircraft Technology – AVweb

    MSE, DXC Technology expand tech partnership – Sports Business Journal

    MSE, DXC Technology expand tech partnership – Sports Business Journal

    Technology Driving Performance: How Elite MA Plans Leverage Data, Care Coordination, and Advanced Analytics to Thrive Amid CMS’s Rigorous 2025 Standards, Black Book – Newswire.com

    Unlocking Success: How Top MA Plans Harness Data and Analytics to Excel Under CMS’s 2025 Standards

    Arqit acquires Ampliphae’s technology IP, enhancing its global encryption portfolio – GlobeNewswire

    Arqit Boosts Global Encryption Portfolio with Strategic Acquisition of Ampliphae’s Technology IP

    Searenergy partners with Tethys Robotics on subsea inspection technology – Windtech International

    Searenergy partners with Tethys Robotics on subsea inspection technology – Windtech International

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Aziz Ansari made Keanu Reeves Indian food so he wouldn’t feel ‘freaked out’ directing him in Good Fortune (exclusive) – Entertainment Weekly

    Aziz Ansari Whips Up Indian Cuisine for Keanu Reeves to Ease Directing Jitters in Good Fortune

    Cassie Ventura welcomes third child – crossroadstoday.com

    Cassie Ventura Joyfully Welcomes Her Third Child!

    Drew Brees opens Surge Entertainment Center in Metairie hot spot for new businesses – NOLA.com

    Drew Brees Unveils Exciting New Surge Entertainment Center in Metairie!

    Will Gio Stay Or Go On May 27 General Hospital? – Yahoo

    Will Gio Make a Shocking Exit on May 27th’s General Hospital

    First look: Disney shows star villains, Little Mermaid, tech – Yahoo

    Unveiling Disney’s Dark Side: A Sneak Peek at Iconic Villains, The Little Mermaid, and Cutting-Edge Technology!

    Fans Call Out Disney For Cutting Favorite ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Character: ‘It Makes Me Want to Cry’ – Yahoo

    Disney Fans Heartbroken Over the Cut of Beloved ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Character: ‘It Makes Me Want to Cry

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Q1 2025 Quantum Technology Investment: What’s Driving the Surge in Quantum Investment? – The Quantum Insider

    Unleashing the Future: Exploring the Surge in Quantum Technology Investments for Q1 2025

    MIT Team Releases Tempting Report on Electric Aircraft Technology – AVweb

    MIT Team Releases Tempting Report on Electric Aircraft Technology – AVweb

    MSE, DXC Technology expand tech partnership – Sports Business Journal

    MSE, DXC Technology expand tech partnership – Sports Business Journal

    Technology Driving Performance: How Elite MA Plans Leverage Data, Care Coordination, and Advanced Analytics to Thrive Amid CMS’s Rigorous 2025 Standards, Black Book – Newswire.com

    Unlocking Success: How Top MA Plans Harness Data and Analytics to Excel Under CMS’s 2025 Standards

    Arqit acquires Ampliphae’s technology IP, enhancing its global encryption portfolio – GlobeNewswire

    Arqit Boosts Global Encryption Portfolio with Strategic Acquisition of Ampliphae’s Technology IP

    Searenergy partners with Tethys Robotics on subsea inspection technology – Windtech International

    Searenergy partners with Tethys Robotics on subsea inspection technology – Windtech International

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home General

Are ‘mother trees’ real?

July 10, 2023
in General
Are ‘mother trees’ real?
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In the forests of British Columbia, where recent wildfires have sent smoke across borders and dimmed blue summer skies, a series of studies from the past 30 years contends that large, old trees send resources and messages to the seedlings around them. The “mothering” can, hypothetically, help burned landscapes recover faster, boost the amount of carbon dioxide stores in soil, and improve the resiliency of natural systems overall.

The idea seems to borrow from bedtime tales about ancient trees and the enchanted forests they foster; to validate beliefs about all types of creatures nourish their young; to vouch for the inherent goodness of nature, where collaboration triumphs over competition. 

[Related: Behold the world’s tallest trees]

But two papers have recently called into question the evidence supporting the “mother tree” explanation. Do these veterans of the forest act as guardians for newer generations, protecting them from drought, disease, and deforestation? Or is their relationship much more complicated?

What is a ‘mother tree’?

The term “mother tree” was coined in the 2000s by a Canadian scientist named Suzanne Simard, who grew up in a family of loggers in the Monashee Mountains in British Columbia. The old-growth forests on the range sustained a booming timber industry for more than a century.

In her book Finding the Mother Tree, Simard describes a childhood spent wandering through the forest, gaining keen insight on the intimate connections between long-lived trees like Douglas firs and ponderosa pines and the ecosystems they inhabit. Later, she studied forestry, became a research scientist for the Canadian Ministry of Forests and now teaches and leads a lab at the University of British Columbia.

Her childhood experiences and decades of scientific research led her to draw a connection that was somewhat revolutionary in forestry management and the conventional biological thinking that species must compete to survive. Simard proposed that large trees that are hundreds or even thousands of years old can send carbon, nutrients, water, hormones, and even alarm signals to young plants via a network of underground fungi. She describes these trees as “mothers” in her writing and interviews, and argues that they are essential in making forests around the planet better suited to survive climate change.

“We need to save the legacies, the mother trees and networks, and the wood, the genes, so they can pass their wisdom onto the next generation of trees so they can withstand the future stresses coming down the road,” Simard said in her Ted Talk from 2016. “We need to be conservationists.”

What’s the scientific evidence?

Some forestry researchers warn that the mother tree viewpoint is ahead of the science. A paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution in February reviewed 26 studies that look at the ability of underground fungal networks to transfer resources and if mother trees send resources to young plants.

The studies spanned continents, experimental design, and forest and soil type. The authors found that in about 80 percent of the studies, the large, long-lived trees had no benefit to the trees around them. In 18 percent of the studies the seedlings did benefit. And in a much smaller subset, those trees actually harmed the others.

“There are lots of important ecological roles for big trees in the forest,” says Justine Karst, the lead author of the paper and a professor at the University of Alberta. “But this sort of popularized idea of their role and how they work with these fungi as these passive conduits in the soil doing things under the direction of trees, there’s just not really evidence for that.”

Part of the problem is that there’s so much variability within the 26 studies, making it difficult to draw conclusions about mother trees—or large, old trees, as Karst prefers to call them—as a whole. 

“It differs in which forest the experiment was conducted in: how far the seedlings were growing from the mature tree, the type of seeds or the type of soils, if there’s overstory mortality,” Karst explains. “There’s so many of these background features that there’s just no way to generalize. This is something that we would suggest moving forward is that we need to understand, what is the cause of this variability? 

Another issue is that most of the research that supports the mother tree theory comes from studies in labs, Meghan Midgley, a soil ecologist at Morton Arboretum who was not an author on the recent review, explains. “We haven’t been able to observe it in the forest, which is where we’d really want to see this sort of relationship happening.” 

The idea might even be so appealing, scientists have let it bias them. “There are alternative explanations that have not been acknowledged in studies,” Karst says. For example, one common experimental design using mesh bag encourages different types of fungal growth, potentially biasing the results. 

PopSci reached out to Simard and The Mother Tree Project about these scientific uncertainties, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

What role do fungi play?

One facet of the mother tree debate experts agree on is that fungi have a unique relationship with trees. Midgley studies this symbiotic subset of organisms, which grow on the tree’s root system and allow it to gain access to water and nutrients deep in the soil. In return, the guests get carbon, which the fungi can’t can’t produce itself. “From the tropics to boreal forests, trees are associating with fungi,” Midgley says. “This is a relationship that has been established for much of evolutionary time.

These collaborative fungi also have an overall beneficial effect on plants. “There are many hundreds of studies showing that when there’s no fungi, plants don’t grow as well as when there are fungi,” Midgeley adds. “There’s also some evidence that they can help protect plants from below-ground pathogens or from being eaten by below-ground invertebrates, so they can play a variety of roles for a plant.”

[Related: Inside the lab that’s growing mushroom computers]

Knowing this, forest manager might take fungi, as well as large, old trees, into account when restoring an ecosystem after a wildfire. However, there’s not enough evidence right now to support specific strategies, like introducing fungi into a forest that’s been harmed by wildfire, Midgley says.

She and Karst both suggest further research that would help scientists better understand the variability between mature trees and their relationships with fungi and the rest of the forest. “Why do seedlings sometimes show no response, a positive response, or a negative response [to older trees]?” Karst says. “We don’t know those answers, but I think that they’ll be important to find out.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Popular Science – https://www.popsci.com/environment/mother-tree-research/

Previous Post

Why preserving museum specimens is so vital for science

Next Post

Cyber Charter Reform Could Finally Be Coming To Pennsylvania

Aridity modulates grassland biomass responses to combined drought and nutrient addition – Nature

How Aridity Shapes Grassland Biomass: The Impact of Drought and Nutrient Boosts

May 29, 2025
The Last of Us Science Adviser Says COVID Changed How We View Zombie Stories – Scientific American

The Last of Us Science Adviser Says COVID Changed How We View Zombie Stories – Scientific American

May 29, 2025
States sue over Trump cuts to research funding, STEM diversity efforts – Reuters

States Take Action Against Trump’s Cuts to Research Funding and STEM Diversity Initiatives

May 29, 2025
Nearly 700 women celebrate power of healthy lifestyle with Heart & Sole Five Miler – WIS News 10

Empowered and Energized: Nearly 700 Women Unite for the Heart & Sole Five Miler!

May 29, 2025
Team USA Recap: Blevins Scores Another XCO World Cup Victory; Americans Cap Off Pro Road Nationals – USA Cycling

Team USA Shines: Blevins Dominates XCO World Cup and Americans Triumph at Pro Road Nationals!

May 29, 2025
Tariffs, and Trump’s entire economic agenda, were just thrown into chaos – CNN

Trump’s Economic Agenda in Turmoil: The Impact of New Tariffs

May 29, 2025
Aziz Ansari made Keanu Reeves Indian food so he wouldn’t feel ‘freaked out’ directing him in Good Fortune (exclusive) – Entertainment Weekly

Aziz Ansari Whips Up Indian Cuisine for Keanu Reeves to Ease Directing Jitters in Good Fortune

May 29, 2025
ChristianaCare to acquire former Crozer Health outpatient locations – WHYY

ChristianaCare Expands Its Reach with Acquisition of Former Crozer Health Outpatient Locations

May 29, 2025
Tesla’s European Sales Plummet Amid Politics and Competition – NBC Palm Springs

Tesla’s European Sales Dive: Navigating Political Challenges and Fierce Competition

May 29, 2025
Q1 2025 Quantum Technology Investment: What’s Driving the Surge in Quantum Investment? – The Quantum Insider

Unleashing the Future: Exploring the Surge in Quantum Technology Investments for Q1 2025

May 29, 2025

Categories

Archives

May 2025
MTWTFSS
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 
« Apr    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (649)
  • Economy (662)
  • Entertainment (21,569)
  • General (15,247)
  • Health (9,704)
  • Lifestyle (665)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (664)
  • Politics (670)
  • Science (15,884)
  • Sports (21,168)
  • Technology (15,650)
  • World (650)

Recent News

Aridity modulates grassland biomass responses to combined drought and nutrient addition – Nature

How Aridity Shapes Grassland Biomass: The Impact of Drought and Nutrient Boosts

May 29, 2025
The Last of Us Science Adviser Says COVID Changed How We View Zombie Stories – Scientific American

The Last of Us Science Adviser Says COVID Changed How We View Zombie Stories – Scientific American

May 29, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version