A group of researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada has now collected the results from a large number of different studies to find answers about the contact trees have with each other underground.
Millions of enthusiastic book readers and documentary film viewers have picked up on author Peter Wohlleben’s claim that trees live a secret life.
A life where they talk to each other, show love, and feed their children.
But is this true?
However, Karst and her colleagues point out that several key claims about the collaboration between trees and fungi made by Simard and some other researchers – claims that have been widely repeated in the media and literature in recent years – are only based on very few studies.
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So far, researchers know little about how far such fungal networks between trees extend underground. They also do not know if it is really possible for trees to communicate through such networks, according to Karst and her colleagues.
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“What I have experienced is that there can be a delicate balance between making research understandable and tipping over into the ‘Disneyfication’ of research results,” [biology professor Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson] says.
