Mingzhen Lu on The Evolution of Root Systems & Biogeochemical Cycling

As fictional Santa Fe Institute chaos mathematician Ian Malcolm famously put it, “Life finds a way” — and this is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than by roots: seeking out every opportunity, improving in their ability to access and harness nutrients as they’ve evolved over the last 400 million years. Roots also exemplify another maxim for living systems: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” As the Earth’s climate has transformed, the plants and fungi have transformed along with it, reaching into harsh and unstable environments and proving themselves in a crucible of evolutionary innovation that has reshaped the biosphere. Dig deep enough and you’ll find that life, like roots, trends toward the ever-finer, more adaptable, more intertwined…we all live in and on Charles Darwin’s “tangled bank”, whether we recognize it in our farms, our markets, or our minds.

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

This week on Complexity, we talk to SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Mingzhen Lu (Google Scholar, Twitter) about the lessons of the invisible webwork beneath our feet, the hidden world upon which all of us walk and rely — largely unnoticed, and until recently scarcely understood. We discuss the intersection of geography, ecology, and economics; the relationship between the so-called “Wood-Wide Web” and urban systems; how plants domesticated mycorrhizal fungi much as humans domesticated animals and plants; the evolutionary trends revealed by a paleoecological study of roots and what they suggest for the future of technology and civilization… This episode is an especially intertwingled and far-reaching one, as suits the topic. Plant yourself and soak it up!

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Discussed in this episode:

“Evolutionary history resolves global organization of root functional traits”
by Zeqing Ma, Dali Guo, Xingliang Xu, Mingzhen Lu, Richard D. Bardgett, David M. Eissenstat, M. Luke McCormack & Lars O. Hedin
in Nature

“Global plant-symbiont organization and emergence of biogeochemical cycles resolved by evolution-based trait modelling”
by Mingzhen Lu, Lars O. Hedin
in PubMed

“Biome boundary maintained by intense belowground resource competition in world’s thinnest-rooted plant community”
by Mingzhen Lu, William J. Bond, Efrat Sheffer, Michael D. Cramer, Adam G. West, Nicky Allsopp, Edmund C. February, Samson Chimphango, Zeqing Ma, Jasper A. Slingsby, and Lars O. Hedin
in PNAS

Complexity ep. 8 - Olivia Judson on Major Energy Transitions in Evolutionary History

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
by Henry Gee (Senior Editor of Nature)

"General statistical model shows that macroevolutionary patterns and processes are consistent with Darwinian gradualism”
by SFI Professor Mark Pagel
in Nature
Complexity ep. 29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer

“Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions”
by SFI Professor Alison Gopnik
in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B

Complexity ep. 35 - Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West

Complexity ep. 17 - Chris Kempes on The Physical Constraints on Life & Evolution

Complexity ep. 60 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's Naturegemälde

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick

The Shock Doctrine
by Naomi Klein

Doughnut Economics
by Kate Raworth

The Long Descent
by John Michael Greer

“6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World”
by Paul Stamets

Complexity ep. 43 - Vicky Yang & Henrik Olsson on Political Polling & Polarization: How We Make Decisions & Identities

The Expanse (novel series)
by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck, here at IPFest 2019 on our World Building panel)