The temperate rainforests of the Chilean Coast Range are home to a spectacular array of life: iridescent blue lizards, tiny wild cats called kodkods, and curly vines of waxy red bellflowers. Towering over this biodiversity are endangered ancient conifers, called alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides), whose trunks can get as wide as shipping containers. These alerce forests show exceptionally low mortality and grow slowly—one tree lived more than 3,600 years.
New research published today in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation makes clear that these massive trees also shelter an enormous assortment of organisms belowground that have helped the forest, a massive carbon sink, survive and adapt over millennia.
One large individual—estimated to be over 2,400 years old—hosts more than twice the underground fungal diversity of smaller, younger trees of the same species. The bigger the alerce, the greater the variety of fungi that scientists found hidden in the soil, including hundreds of species that are likely new to science.
The discovery is important because these soil fungi, known as mycorrhizal fungi, help forests function. They funnel water and nutrients to trees through their root systems and assist plants in fighting stressors like drought and pathogens. The fungi also work as conduits for drawing carbon into soil. Globally, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities—the type associated with alerce trees—move roughly one billion tons of carbon per year into Earth’s soils.
