Peer-reviewedCC BYScience
Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks
15 affiliations
- 1Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE), Section Ecology and Evolution, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 2Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), Wilmington, DE, USA
- 3Waag Futurelab – Stichting Waag Society, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 4Infomatters Department, AMOLF Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 5Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE), Section Systems Ecology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 6Conservation South Africa, Ebden House, Belmont Park, Cape Town, South Africa
- 7Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
- 8Plant Hormone Biology Group, Green Life Sciences Cluster, Swammerdam Institute for Life Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 9Centre d’étude de la forêt (CEF) and Institut de Biologie Integrative et des Systemes (IBIS), Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada
- 10Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada
- 11Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
- 12Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
- 13Plants, Photosynthesis and Soil, School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
- 14Center for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium
- 15Department of Biology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
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.
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BibTeX
@article{stewart2026global,
title = {{Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks}},
author = {Justin D. Stewart and Corentin Bisot and Rachael I.M. Cargill and Michael E. Van Nuland and Heidi‐Jayne Hawkins and Loreto Oyarte Gálvez and Malin Klein and Marije van Son and Victoria Terry and Louis Paré and Claudia Banchini and Franck O. P. Stefani and Félix Kahane and Kai-Kai Lin and Renato K. Braghiere and Katie J. Field and Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia and Jinsu Elhance and Vasilis Kokkoris and Merlin Sheldrake and James T. Weedon and Thomas Simon Shimizu and S.T. West and E. Toby Kiers},
journal = {Science},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1126/science.adu4373},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu4373},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks
AU - Justin D. Stewart
AU - Corentin Bisot
AU - Rachael I.M. Cargill
AU - Michael E. Van Nuland
AU - Heidi‐Jayne Hawkins
AU - Loreto Oyarte Gálvez
AU - Malin Klein
AU - Marije van Son
AU - Victoria Terry
AU - Louis Paré
AU - Claudia Banchini
AU - Franck O. P. Stefani
AU - Félix Kahane
AU - Kai-Kai Lin
AU - Renato K. Braghiere
AU - Katie J. Field
AU - Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia
AU - Jinsu Elhance
AU - Vasilis Kokkoris
AU - Merlin Sheldrake
AU - James T. Weedon
AU - Thomas Simon Shimizu
AU - S.T. West
AU - E. Toby Kiers
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/11
JO - Science
DO - 10.1126/science.adu4373
UR - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu4373
AB - 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.
SN - 0036-8075
SN - 0193-4511
SN - 1095-9203
ER -