Podcast: The forest is like the internet, fungi are its cables

The Brain We Are podcast introduces interesting names from Czech science today and, in cooperation with the Neuron Foundation, gives space to Neuron Award laureates. After Tomáš Mikolov, the next guest was the biologist Petr Kohout, who talks about the forest as an internet network to which plants are connected through mycelium.

"In a forest there is an exchange of information between fungus and plant. We know how it works and it is fixed in the plants, but it turns out that communication can also take place between two plants through the mycorrhizal network. One mycelium colonises the roots of two different trees and they are able to pass nutrients to each other, and information about attack by a pathogen. We know such things happen, but we do not yet know their significance for the ecosystem," Mgr. Petr Kohout, PhD explains in the podcast.

This expert on the symbiosis of fungi and plants answers questions about how plants communicate with each other, about how an ideal landscape should be more varied and arranged in a mosaic, and about what brought him to research.

"I enjoyed working outdoors, and when I had to decide which direction to study in, it was easy. At sixteen or seventeen I bought the book Mycorrhizal Symbiosis by Dr Gryndler, which captivated me. Mainly because on every other page it says what is not yet known, so I thought it would be good to fill that in," Petr Kohout recalls of his beginnings.

Petr Kohout studied botany and mycology at the University of Tartu in Estonia, and his specialisation became the same subject as the title of the book he once bought — the coexistence of fungi and plant roots in a forest ecosystem. For his work at the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Science he received the Neuron Award for promising young scientists for 2019 in biology.