wood wide web
The popular name for the mycorrhizal network connecting trees in a forest — an underground internet of fungal threads through which trees communicate, share resources, and send warning signals. The metaphor is startlingly accurate: trees are nodes, fungal hyphae are cables, and nutrients and chemical signals are the data. The network is decentralized and resilient, with multiple redundant pathways.
Etymology
The phrase was coined by the journal Nature in 1997, in an editorial accompanying Suzanne Simard's landmark paper demonstrating carbon transfer between tree species through ectomycorrhizal networks. The pun on "World Wide Web" stuck, and has become the most widely recognized term for the phenomenon.
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