Underground allies: Mycorrhizal flexibility facilitates orchid occurrence in post‐mining landscapes
A. Ashokan, E. Sciaudone, A. Battaglini, P. Cortis, D. Cafasso, S. Cozzolino · 2026
Read Underground allies: Mycorrhizal flexibility facilitates orchid occurrence in post‐mining landscapes by A. Ashokan, E. Sciaudone, A. Battaglini, P. Cortis, D. Cafasso, S. Cozzolino (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13586638.txt.
Description
A. Ashokan and colleagues ask how a widespread orchid manages to live on poisoned mine land in Italy. Orchids are famed as fussy plants that need the right fungi in their roots and the right pollinators, so bare, metal-laced soil should defeat them. Yet the broad-leaved helleborine thrives at old mining sites in Sardinia and Tuscany where most plants fail. The team compared root fungi and plant genes at paired mine and woodland sites.
The fungi living inside roots differed sharply between the two settings. Woodland plants leaned on fungal partners that were scarce in mines, while mine plants took up tougher, more opportunistic kinds. Plant genes, though, barely differed between settings, which points to fresh colonization and steady gene flow. The orchid's trick seems to be flexibility in choosing fungal partners, not a special mine-born breed.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | A. Ashokan, E. Sciaudone, A. Battaglini, P. Cortis, D. Cafasso, S. Cozzolino |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |