Through their effects on colonization and interplant transfers, mycorrhizal networks have been shown to facilitate the establishment, growth, survival or defence regulation of individual plants in a wide range of ecosystems. At the plant community level, mycorrhizal networks have been suggested to influence interplant interactions and plant community diversity. The mycorrhizal networks is considered ecologically and evolutionarily sig-nificant because of its positive effects on the fitness of the member plants and fungi.
Mycorrhizal networks provide a source of mycorrhizal fungal inoculum for establishing seedlings, and a potential conduit for interplant transfer of water, carbon and nutrients.
Mycorrhizal networks appear to be ubiquitous in nature, and this raises the possibility that facilitation via networks may be as important as competition in the structuring of plant and fungal communities. It also suggests that mycorrhizal networks play an important role in the functioning of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems.
Networks can be exclusive to a subset of plants able to form mycorrhizas with the same fungi, potentially linking members of a single species. The mycorrhizal networks can also be inclusive, as may be the case for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi systems, where linkages can occur between multiple plant and fungal species
Mycorrhizal
network or wood wide web
