Fungi are the internet of the forest — and they share resources

In the 1990s, Suzanne Simard discovered that trees in a forest are connected through underground fungal networks — now called the 'Wood Wide Web' — and actively use them to transfer carbon, water, and nutrients. Her experiments showed that mother trees, when stressed or dying, channelled extra nutrients to seedlings through the network. Other research has found that trees share resources with different species. The fungi benefit from sugar the trees produce; the trees benefit from the fungi's ability to extract phosphorus and water from soil. The forest, in this sense, functions as a cooperative organism.

Source: Simard et al., Nature (1997); Simard, Finding the Mother Tree (2021)