Ecosystem Engineers Seminar: Fungi and Transportation Engineers

For our group project at YYGS, we compared two things that sound completely unrelated: fungi and transportation engineers. The point of the presentation was that they are actually solving the same problem, just in very different materials.

Fungi are a whole kingdom of organisms, including mushrooms, molds, yeasts, and mycelium. They don't photosynthesize like plants. Instead they break down dead plants and animals and return the nutrients to the soil, which makes them one of the main recyclers in an ecosystem. Underground, they grow networks of thin threads called mycelium, and through their mycorrhizal connections they link up with the roots of plants and trees. Those connections move nutrients around, and the fungi trade them with plants in exchange for carbon in the form of sugars and fats. One of my favorite facts we found is that the largest single living organism on Earth by mass is a honey fungus in Oregon, with an underground network spread across almost 10 square kilometers.

Transportation engineering is a branch of civil engineering that plans, designs, and maintains the systems that move people and goods: roads, railways, pipelines, public transit, and so on. When you line the two up, the overlap is clear. A fungus is trying to connect scattered nutrient sources through the most efficient and resilient path it can grow. A transportation engineer is trying to connect scattered cities through the most efficient and resilient path they can build. Same problem, different scale.

The main difference is what each one builds with. Fungi make their networks out of their own bodies, growing the structure as they go. Engineers make theirs out of concrete, steel, and asphalt. Fungi only move nutrients. Engineers move nutrients, people, objects, and basically anything else. But the underlying logic, connecting dispersed hubs without wasting energy or resources, is the same in both.

The part that stuck with me most is where the two collide. The same kind of human construction that builds our transportation networks can wreck the fungal ones. Soil compaction from construction cuts fungi off from the oxygen and water they need. Roads and buildings fragment habitats and sever the mycorrhizal connections that let plants and fungi share nutrients. And structures like dams and embankments change how water flows, which can dry out or flood the soil and kill off fungal species. So while we build one network, we can quietly take apart another.