{
  "abstract": "Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi form symbioses with ~70% of plant species, building hyphal networks that exchange nutrients for host-derived carbon. These tubular networks move ~1 billion metric tons of carbon per year into Earth’s soils. However, we have no quantitative understanding of the hyphal infrastructure required to carry out this resource transfer. We assembled data from 322 studies representing more than 16,000 soil cores across nine biomes and developed machine-learning models to predict hyphal densities globally. With robotic imaging of more than 300,000 hyphae, we calibrated a biomass model from our spatial predictions. We estimate that global topsoils contain 1.10 × 10 17 ± 0.13 × 10 17 SD kilometers of living hyphae, weighing ~300 ± 60 SD megatons, ~4- to 6-fold the biomass of humans. Our uncertainty analyses identified undersampled ecosystems that require additional empirical attention.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE), Section Ecology and Evolution, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands",
    "Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), Wilmington, DE, USA",
    "Waag Futurelab – Stichting Waag Society, Amsterdam, Netherlands",
    "Infomatters Department, AMOLF Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands",
    "Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE), Section Systems Ecology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands",
    "Conservation South Africa, Ebden House, Belmont Park, Cape Town, South Africa",
    "Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa",
    "Plant Hormone Biology Group, Green Life Sciences Cluster, Swammerdam Institute for Life Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands",
    "Centre d’étude de la forêt (CEF) and Institut de Biologie Integrative et des Systemes (IBIS), Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada",
    "Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada",
    "Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA",
    "Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA",
    "Plants, Photosynthesis and Soil, School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK",
    "Center for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium",
    "Department of Biology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 24,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Justin D. Stewart",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7812-5095"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Corentin Bisot",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-4533-2458"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Rachael I.M. Cargill",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-5894-3728"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Michael E. Van Nuland",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-3333-0212"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        5,
        6
      ],
      "name": "Heidi‐Jayne Hawkins",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-9334-0669"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4,
        3
      ],
      "name": "Loreto Oyarte Gálvez",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7570-8431"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        7
      ],
      "name": "Malin Klein",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6500-047X"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        3
      ],
      "name": "Marije van Son",
      "orcid": "0009-0000-6755-2705"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Victoria Terry",
      "orcid": "0009-0006-6992-0480"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        8
      ],
      "name": "Louis Paré",
      "orcid": "0009-0005-0751-9475"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        9
      ],
      "name": "Claudia Banchini"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        9
      ],
      "name": "Franck O. P. Stefani",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6025-2192"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Félix Kahane",
      "orcid": "0009-0003-6974-3726"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Kai-Kai Lin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        10,
        11
      ],
      "name": "Renato K. Braghiere",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-7722-717X"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        12
      ],
      "name": "Katie J. Field",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-5196-2360"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        13
      ],
      "name": "Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-9584-2109"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Jinsu Elhance",
      "orcid": "0009-0009-6393-0671"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Vasilis Kokkoris",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-1667-0493"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Merlin Sheldrake"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "James T. Weedon",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-0491-8719"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Thomas Simon Shimizu",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-0040-7380"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        14
      ],
      "name": "S.T. West",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-2152-3153"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "E. Toby Kiers",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-0597-1653"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ehywqezca8ab8.bib",
  "cited_by": 7,
  "doi": "10.1126/science.adu4373",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "ehywqezca8ab8",
  "issns": [
    "0036-8075",
    "0193-4511",
    "1095-9203"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu4373",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "1110|Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions"
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  "openalex": "W7164373835",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": "42275513",
  "published": "2026-06-11",
  "publisher": "American Association for the Advancement of Science",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ehywqezca8ab8.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T13:26:50Z",
      "native_id": "W7164373835",
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      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu4373"
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  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "openalex:1110|Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions",
      "subfield": "plant-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks",
  "title_text": "Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-08T13:20:44Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ehywqezca8ab8",
  "venue": "Science",
  "versions": []
}