Nice photo and this is fantastic. Congrats César and Nancy!

In organisms like mycorrhizal fungi, fluid mechanics may be unique as it may extend across Kingdoms of life, between plants & fungi. Who knows if what we learn from these organisms can help us build more efficient pipelines and other human-made fluid transport systems…

I hope this work sparks new trait-based research that contributes to our understanding of how vascular systems can function and evolve.

Why does this matter? Because flow through mycorrhizal networks influences:
How plants share or compete for resources
How ecosystems respond to stress and store C
The balance between cooperation and competition in mycorrhizal symbioses and plants

Linking biology, ecology and physics (Fluid mechanics) gives us traits to measure mycorrhizal network transport efficiency, resilience, and trade-offs in ways biology alone couldn’t.

Mycorrhizal fungi form networks that connect plants and contribute to shaping plant diversity and ecosystem functioning.
These networks function like a vascular system, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding how they work.

Thanks James Franklin, @1pantunes.bsky.social and Brian Lanoil for a great collaboration!

Why this matters:

Previous research has primarily focused on how periwinkle suppresses native plants.

Our study reveals that its impact extends below ground, affecting soil invertebrates, which influence decomposition rates and nutrient cycling, potentially affecting the overall forest health.

The study provides the first piece of evidence that invasion by Common Periwinkle (Vinca minor), an ornamental that people love to put in their gardens but escapes into natural forests, significantly alters soil invertebrate communities in invaded habitats.

The takeaway? The NWH needs stronger, more reproducible evidence to move beyond being a metaphor.

We introduce 11 "Allelopathy Postulates" (like Koch’s postulates in disease ecology) to rigorously test allelopathy as a causal, adaptive strategy. Most published studies don’t pass even half of them.