或许受限于我们所属时代和物种的价值观,我们倾向于把树当成个体。但它们是紧密相连的社会生物。在地下,所有的树都得到了共生的真菌伙伴的支持。这些树给真菌提供糖分,而真菌则从土壤中抽取矿物质并使其渗入树的根部。这种网络的复杂性直到最近才被揭示出来。看起来,真菌的网络不分种类地把一片树林里的所有树木连接了起来。
Using radioactive carbon markers, scientists have found that the fungi (or some distributed group intelligence) transfer food from evergreens to deciduous species in the winter and vice versa in the summer. The fungal network also acts as a conduit for sharing information about water availability and attacks by predatory insects, to the extent that it has been nicknamed “the wood-wide-web”.
通过放射性碳标记,科学家们发现,(堪称某种分布式群体智慧的)真菌会在冬季把食物从常绿树种传送到落叶树种,而在夏天则反过来。真菌网络还发挥着传播信息的作用,将有关水源和掠食性昆虫攻击的信息广而告之,以至于得到了“木维网”(wood-wide-web)的外号。
A similar chemical chattering (it is hard not to use human analogies) happens above ground. When the leaves of trees such as oaks and willows are attacked by insects, they are prompted to produce more bitter-tasting tannins. More remarkably, they also produce airborne pheromones which encourage the leaves on other parts of the tree to up their tannin before they too are attacked. Over the great stretches of evolutionary time, other species have learnt to hack these vaporous signals, so that in a seeming contradiction of selfish-gene theory, many individuals of several species benefit from the original tree’s defence mechanism.
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2020-09-15
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