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128 points
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Fungi won’t trade if the tree is not giving enough nutrients. So while they don’t trade for profit they sure as hell aren’t engaging in charity.

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6 points

change your name. Assuming you aren’t underage so that psychotic pedo fuck would’t be interested.

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5 points

I assumed it was ironic. Don’t ya think?

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30 points
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There likely could be other benefits to them sharing such as:

  1. when there is more than they can use, particularly that the mushroom does not like in their environment
  2. producing more leaves is likely highly beneficial for the mushroom, for shade both living and fallen, nutrients and cover with fallen leaves.

Similar for the tree, but also mushrooms are recycling minerals from dead material.

I don’t know if there’d be “stingy” trees (aside from vastly different nutrient needs), I could see it more of miscommunication or having too much difference with language/biologic pathways. EDIT: Also I gotta imagine that giant trees don’t even bother counting it for mushrooms so long as they aren’t stressed. Sugar water is in the grid, take as much as you want.

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4 points

Trees that rely on myco networks usually only get giant because of previous myco networking bonds, which funnel excess nutrients between not just the fungi but also other trees within the system. And depending on the involved species, this sometimes includes multiple plant species exchanging nutrients.

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12 points

I bet you chestnut trees are stingy little assholes. Prickly fucks.

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4 points

At first, I read that as you accusing them of being a stingy asshole chestnut tree and I was about to inform you that you were in fact talking to a lemon, not a tree 😄

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88 points

Mutual aid, in other words.

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6 points

So in dum dum terms the trees are keeping the fungus as a pet?

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3 points

More like two people sharing resources to reproduce more effectively while having a gun pointed towards each other at all times

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5 points

As much as a person can keep an outdoor cat as a pet…

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12 points

A marketplace, of sorts

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41 points

No. Flat out no. There is no competition and they’re literally providing what they are capable of to take care of the others’ need. Mutual aid is not a marketplace and the fact you instinctually thought of it that way tells me you need a book on capitalist realism.

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6 points

Yeah, bacteria secreting digestive enzymes would have been a better example.

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