Fungi / Mycorrhizal Networks

The largest living organism on Earth isn't a whale or a giant sequoia - it's a honey fungus in Oregon covering 2,385 acres, weighing 600 tons, and living 2,400-8,650 years. Fungi are extreme ecosystem engineers, decomposing dead organic matter and breaking complex molecules into forms plants can absorb. Different fungal species specialize in decomposing different compounds - some target cellulose, others lignin, creating a competitive and cooperative decomposition economy. They're the ultimate recyclers, converting death into nutrition.

But fungi's most sophisticated role is the mycorrhizal network - the 'wood wide web' connecting 90% of temperate forest trees to fungal partners. It's a resource distribution system: fungi provide nitrogen and phosphorus extracted from soil; trees provide sugars from photosynthesis. The network redistributes resources from surplus to deficit - old trees share water with saplings via fungal intermediaries, creating a market that allocates resources based on local scarcity. Visa performs the same function in commerce: a trusted intermediary that enables value transfer between parties who don't directly interact.

The organizational principle is radical: The most efficient distribution systems aren't centralized or peer-to-peer - they're intermediated networks. Fungi demonstrate that inserting a specialized intermediary between nodes can create more efficient resource allocation than direct connections. The mycorrhizal network doesn't eliminate the market - it lubricates it, taking a cut in exchange for connecting supply with demand across space and time. Every robust ecosystem has its fungi - the intermediaries who profit by making everyone else more efficient.