Monotropa uniflora: how a plant conned fungi

Plants are great producers — they’re the source of food for many of earth’s animals, insects and microbes. As autotrophic, primary producers, plants are rooted to the base of the food chain as firmly as they’re rooted to the ground. A famous food chain we learned in schools taught us that plant produces its own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. A rabbit feeds on the plant. A fox eats the rabbit. And when the fox dies, microbes eat (decompose) the fox’s body, which then goes back to the ground. Microbes are therefore on the top of the food chain as they feed (infect) on animals and plants.

Some plants have found ways around this rule. For example, the Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant, preys on insects and ants by trapping them in its leaves. Some plants, like mistletoes, are parasitic and grow on another plant. Mistletoes penetrate the host plant through its modified root called haustorium to absorb nutrients.

Highly successful fungal parasites also use haustorium to infect and steal nutrients from plants. However, fungi aren’t always parasitic. Some fungi and plants form beneficial partnerships called mycorrhizal symbiosis, in which the fungus colonises the root of the host plant. In the plant-mycorrhizal mutualism, the fungi gains sugars fixed by plants and in return, the fungi provide the plant with vital nutrients from the…