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.
Mutual aid, in other words.
A marketplace, of sorts
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.
There’s no competition between trees? Hmm…
Not all competition is mediated via markets. Mushrooms will compete by injecting themselves into their adversaries using their own internal pressure.
There likely could be other benefits to them sharing such as:
- when there is more than they can use, particularly that the mushroom does not like in their environment
- 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.
Friendly reminder that cooperation is mutually beneficial and the mathematical solution to the prisoner’s dilemma is to cooperate but not be a pushover.
That fungus would eat the tree if it had the abiliry
Don’t ascribe motivations to biological processes.
That fungus wouldn’t eat the tree because it doesn’t eat the tree. There are tree eating fungi but that is not one of them.
That fungus is proof of cooperation being mutually beneficial and evidence of how “altruism” works out in favor of the cooperators.
There are tree eating fungi but that is not one of them.
Based on what?
According to my quick research, symbiotic fungus doesn’t fruit unless the tree is in trouble. That tree seems fine, so then the fungus probably isn’t good for the tree
In case there are seriously any “
social Darwinists” eugenicists here:https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution-today/social-darwinism
https://www.northwestern.edu/onebook/the-reluctant-mr-darwin/essays/darwin-morality.html
https://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/may/09/evolutionary-theory-gone-wrong-darwin
They are actually maximizing their profit
THE PLANTS HAVE GONE WOKE
It’s called an ecosystem
The continued life & growth of both plants would be the profit incentive, wouldn’t it?
The continued life & growth of people in a community helping each other is the exact motivation that usually makes the profit incentive useless
