S2E04 - Undergrove (Mycorrhizae mushrooms) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of your favorite
games.

Brian (00:11):
Today we're going to discuss Undergrove by AEG.
Hey, how's it going? Welcomeback to Gaming with Science. I'm
Brian.

Jason (00:23):
This is Jason

Anny (00:24):
And I'm Anny.

Brian (00:25):
Anny, how's it going? We've been talking about trying
to get you on literally forever,and we finally found a good game
to do it. Can you introduceyourself?

Anny (00:32):
Yeah. My name is Anny Chung. I'm an associate
professor in Plant Biology andPlant Pathology at the
University of Georgia, I wouldclassify myself as an ecologist.
And what I usually am interestedin is the ecology of plants and
microbes that interact withplants, usually below ground,

(00:52):
which is very appropriate forthis game.

Brian (00:54):
Anny's a fancy professor. She has an endowment. She's the
Haynes. What is it? The Haynesprofessor for underground
ecology, or below groundecology.

Anny (01:02):
It's very specific. I stumbled into it. But the, I
think the full title is TheHaynes Endowed Professor for
below-ground botany, sospecifically only below ground.
Yeah, I don't get to do anythingabove ground.

Brian (01:19):
You have a counterpart who does the above ground stuff

Anny (01:21):
I do have a counterpart, Megan de Marsh, who is the above
ground botany person.

Brian (01:28):
anyway. Well, your research is really cool, and I'm
really glad to have you on. Iknow that you've said that you
are not a card carryingmycologist, but I also know that
you study fungi a lot more thanmost people that I know. For
someone who is not a cardcarrying mycologist, I know it's
a big part of your work.

Unknown (01:42):
Yeah, and that is right, in terms of the microbes
that we do study below ground.My lab focuses on fungi, quite a
lot more than we do bacteria.But yeah, I think the reason I
say that I'm not a card carryingmycologist is that, that was
never a part of my formaltraining, as I was doing my
degrees coming into thisposition, but a lot of our work

(02:05):
does involve fungi, and I dolike them a lot.

Brian (02:07):
Well, that's fine, Jason and I like bacteria, but you're
still allowed anyway. Okay, sobefore we get into talking about
Undergrove, and I am veryexcited to talk about it,
because this is, this might be aspicy conversation. I did a
little bit more research onthis, and this is, there's some
controversy here. Controversycan lead to fun conversations
about sort of science andmetaphor and how we communicate

(02:30):
science. I think that'sdefinitely part of this. But
let's talk about some otherscience for a bit. So Anny, we
usually send this to the guestsfirst. Do you have an
interesting science fact you'dlike to share with our dear
listeners? ,

Anny (02:42):
yeah since you did tell me that you were gonna ask me this
question, and I actually did,recently find out something
super cool, and so a colleagueof mine at Rice University
recently published a shortlittle correspondence in Current
Biology where he and hisstudents found an instance of a
plant in some way eating aninsect. And so this is a

(03:05):
parasitic plant that usuallyparasitizes oaks, I believe. And
this same oak is alsoparasitized by gall forming
wasps. And so what they found isthat this parasitic plant also
actively parasitizes the gallsthat have the wasps in them and
kills the Wasp, which is reallycool. It's like a reversal of

(03:26):
what you would imagine, youknow, normally think of as
trophic levels.

Brian (03:30):
So this is not a carnivorous plant, per se, but
this is a plant eating a plantthat is being parasitized by an
insect,

Anny (03:37):
yeah, and it's while doing so also killing the insect. It's
pretty cool.

Jason (03:42):
Is it getting nutrients out of that? Like, does it kill
the insect? Does it? Does itseek out the galls? So, because
the insect has, like, extranitrogen or something in it,

Anny (03:50):
so I don't think they actually have evidence of that
yet. I'm sure he's working onit. This is, I think, just to
get the phenomenon out. In thepaper they do say that
generally, where this parasiticplant attaches is not where
galls frequently form on thesetrees, and so they're using that

(04:11):
as evidence to say that, hey,these parasitic plants are maybe
actively seeking out galls whenthey do happen, because that's
not a normal attachment placefor them.

Brian (04:19):
What is the parasitic plant? Is it one that we would
have heard of before?

Anny (04:22):
It's called a love vine.

Brian (04:24):
A love vine, what a nice term for a parasite.

Anny (04:28):
The genus name is Cassythia, or Cassytha actually,

Brian (04:32):
okay, well, we will definitely drop this into the
show notes for sure, so thatpeople can check it out.

Anny (04:36):
Fun little paper.

Brian (04:38):
All right. Jason, did you something you wanted to share,
too.

Jason (04:41):
I did. So I was looking up some things that might be
relevant to this, and found thatjust a few months ago, there was
a group in Europe that publishedon mycorrhizae, which are the
fungi that we're gonna betalking about a lot. And they
were trying to study how theygrow their underground networks
efficiently. Because we'll talkmore about this later. But

(05:02):
basically, these type of fungi,they send all these thin little
networks of of hyphae, theircells out through the soil to
get nutrients and stuff. Butthat takes a lot of energy. And
so how do they do it well. Andso what they did, they had this
really cool setup where they hadthe fungi these mycorrhizae
growing in petri dishes, lots ofthem. And like, half the petri

(05:22):
dish was just the fungus. Halfalso had some roots that they
could colonize. And they had arobotic a robotic camera set up
to take pictures of thisautomatically. And so they could
scan this and automaticallydetect all the junctions and the
way they formed and the waynutrients were flowing inside
the hyphae. And they got, like,half a million junction points,
they're able to catalog andstudy and be able to figure out,

(05:44):
essentially, the rules ofbuilding a mycorrhizal network
underground so that it functionswell, okay, which is impressive
for something that, I mean, ithas no nervous system. It's just
a fungus growing through thesoil looking for nutrients.

Brian (05:57):
I've seen really cool, like time lapses, like Ze Frank
did a thing on slime mold. Slimemolds are not fungi, by the way,
but of them basically likesolving and recreating, like a
map of the Japanese subwaysystem. And ants can do stuff
like this too. But I've neverheard of anyone doing this in
three dimensions.

Jason (06:14):
Well, this is on the petri dish, so still probably
only two dimensional. Okay, so,but three dimensions would be
very cool. Yeah.

Anny (06:21):
So I read that paper when it came out to it made quite a
splash. It's very exciting. AndI think one of the main one of
the main labs that developed thestudy, or like was driving this
study, I think they have thesereally cool systems where you
can actually grow this specifictype of mycorrhizal fungi, which
usually cannot grow without ahost on a petri dish, which, in

(06:42):
and of itself is like a prettydifficult thing to do. And the
fact that they were able to doall of this at such scale and
then collaborate with anotherlab to develop this, like
robotic imaging technology andlike the algorithms to go
through all of that imaging datais really cool.

Brian (06:58):
Okay, so there's a bunch of different innovations. First
of all, just growing theorganism at all is kind of a big
deal.

Anny (07:04):
Yeah. I mean, we've known how to do that, but it's hard.
Okay, yeah.

Brian (07:08):
All right, that's very cool. Well, thank you. Uh,
should we talk about undergrove?What do you think

Jason (07:13):
No, let's pick a different game. I think that
would be better.

Brian (07:15):
Okay All right, um, let's talk about, I just got the fox
experiment. Do you want to talkabout that instead? So
undergrove is a game that cameout recently. It is published by
a duo of Elizabeth Hargrave andMark Wootten. So Elizabeth
Hargrave, we've talked aboutbefore, the lead designer of
wingspan, which we can never getthrough an episode without

(07:36):
talking about wingspan in termsof how it's revolutionized, sort
of the science board game spacein a meaningful way.

Jason (07:45):
It wasn't even our fault last time we didn't say it at
all, Steven brought it up andstill mentioned wingspan.

Brian (07:50):
I know we just, we just, we're never gonna get away from
wingspan, and I don't have aproblem with that. But
undergrowth is a game that Ihave been hyped for for a year.
It's the first game that wascoming out. It's like, I have to
get this. I was excited to seeit on Kickstarter. Elizabeth
Hargrave of wingspan fame andMark Wootton, this is the second
game they've done. They didanother game for AG, called
mariposas, which is about themonarch butterfly migration. It

(08:14):
is for one to four players,which all of these games have
single player mode now, for 10and up, which now we know means
that they had to test to makesure that the pieces are not
toxic for children to eat. 60 to90 minutes, which How long did
it take when we played? Becausewe actually had the convenience
of being able to play together,which is always nice,

Anny (08:30):
I don't think that it took 90 minutes.

Brian (08:32):
No, maybe that's for slow players.

Jason (08:34):
I think the 60 to 90 minutes was about right. And
especially if you have fourplayers, it's going to take
longer.

Anny (08:39):
Yeah, that's true

Brian (08:40):
for sure. So what does this game look like? So the game
has a series of 48 mushroomtiles, very specifically,
mushroom tiles with just theabove ground portions of the
fungi. They seem to have beenarbitrarily divided up into four
different color groups. They'rebeautifully illustrated. They
have, you know, little abilitieson them, which we'll get into in

(09:00):
a second.

Jason (09:01):
They did actually divide it in a rational way. I found
the designer diary. So it'sbased off of whether they have
like, pores, which is the onewith all the little dots, okay,
whether they have a ring aroundtheir stalk, which is the one
that's the cap, a cap withoutrings, I think. And then yeah,
and then everything else.

Anny (09:18):
Okay. So it is based on like, morphology and
identifiable features.

Brian (09:23):
I'm glad to see that they did that, because, again, you
know, with wingspan, there wasthat deep connection between
abilities and actual biology. Sothey did split them up in some
way that made sense. Yes, okay,so you the goal of the game is
to lay these mushroom tiles outinto a grid. You're kind of
building your forest, and ateach place where four tiles
connect, there's a little roundhole where you can put your

(09:44):
little baby tree seedling,because in this game, you are
playing as a mature Douglas firtree. Each of the mushrooms will
have different abilities onthem, and as long as you have a
little tiny root touching thefungi, you'll have the ability
to use those abilities, and thefungi will let you collect
nitrogen and phosphorus andpotassium. As a plant yourself
you generate carbon throughphotosynthesis, and a lot of the

(10:06):
game is about sort of paying thefungi carbon to activate their
ability. So you give them carbonand they will allow you to
collect the other resources. Theother conceit of the game is
that those little seedlings arethen able to,you're really only
lending the fungi the carbon,like you will put the carbon out
onto the fungi, and then theseedlings will say, Okay, I will

(10:26):
take that back again. And theysuck the carbon back up onto the
seedling, so when they'veaccumulated enough, they sprout
into a tree. You'll score pointsbased on the points values of
your different mushrooms and theones that are touching roots
with roots on the differentmushrooms. Tracking of the game
is done by how often do youabsorb carbon? Every time you
absorb carbon, you move up thislittle track. There's little

(10:47):
benefits. When you get to theend of the track, you'll trigger
the end game. And like a lot ofthese games, there's also sort
of a public goals card based onweird things like, Do you how
many trees do you have in a row,or how many different types of
fungi are you interacting with,or or things like that, and like
Earth and like a lot of gameswhere plants are the focus, of

(11:08):
course, they put animals only onthose public goal cards, because
animals are not really importantto the bulk of what we're going
to be talking about today.

Jason (11:15):
So it's just, it's like, it's a splash image.

Brian (11:17):
It has a splash image. There's nothing to do with
mechanics. It's just the onething where they actually bother
putting animals into the game,is there something that's
tangential to the main focus ofthe game. Which I don't have any
problem with that, right?

Jason (11:30):
We talk about people, how people are blind to the plants
and the fungi into the world,like it's okay to flip that
around every now and then. It'slike the animals can be the side
show for a little bit.

Brian (11:37):
It's a beautiful game. The components are lovely. The
little cardboard tokens arewonderful. The illustrations are
lovely as well.

Jason (11:45):
Well, one aspect of the game is that it's essentially,
it's a resource management game,slash engine builder game, so
you're trying to accumulateresources, you're trying to
drive them in certaindirections. You're trying to
build your trees. All of thisrequires resources which are
pretty scarce, I would say,based on how we played, like, we
were always like, I always needmore of something. Like, there's

(12:06):
never a point. I was just like,rolling in resources and was
fine with that. And then theengine building is kind of odd.
It's like, it builds itself asan engine builder. And I felt
that was weird, because I neverreally felt I got an engine
going. But looking over thedesigner diary, apparently the
idea is that you your engine.It's a slow engine. It rolls
over several turns. So like,this turn, I do this, next turn,

(12:26):
I do this. Next turn, I do this.That's my engine, okay? Because
I'm more used to things whereit's like, okay, I assemble
bunch of things, and this turn,I just fire off, and that's my
engine. So it's a, it's more ofa slow roll engine,

Brian (12:37):
okay, that kind of makes sense. And I can kind of see
that how it's like you have torun through multiple turns to
run through the all thedifferent actions. Talking about
the resource being limited, Ialways feel like there's five
different things that you can doin the game. In terms of
actions, you can sprout aseedling. You can grow roots
onto different mushrooms. Bothof those, if you pay extra you
can place a new mushroom tile todo something. Let's see those

(13:01):
two of them. You can activateabilities on the mushrooms that
are out there to get them topull in stuff for you, you can
absorb carbon. And then the lastaction, which always feels
terrible, is photosynthesis,which, as a plant seems weird,
because you always feel like,well, I don't really want to
photosynthesize. That's soboring.

Anny (13:18):
Yeah, it feels like you're wasting, you're wasting an
action by photosynthesizing,which was something that I
observed as well, because likethat should just be happening by
default, right?

Brian (13:30):
Yeah. I mean to be you should just be generating a
little bit of carbon all thetime, right? Yeah, instead of
having to make a point of doingit,

Jason (13:36):
apparently it was like that one of the early versions
of the game, and then theychanged it, and I don't remember
why, or if they even mentionedwhy. So you mentioned the what
the resources are. So we'vementioned carbon.

Brian (13:46):
Carbon are little black circles, which sort of
distinguishes them from thethree different cubes. Now we've
talked about soil fertility, atleast in terms of agriculture,
as being based on potassium,phosphorus and nitrogen, right?
So you've got three differentcolored cubes that indicate
those three different resources.And a lot of times cubes can be
spent to do like, every time youwant to place a mushroom, you

(14:06):
just have to pay an extra cube.You've got to put some of your
resources out to say, like, hey,fungi come out and come out and
play. Nitrogen is sort of theweird how do they do this? It's
like they explained this in thebook. I think they said that
phosphorus is important forseeds and you need potassium to,
like, pay for moving nutrientsaround, nitrogen you use for,

(14:28):
like, literally everything whichkind of is reflected in the
game. Because nitrogen is, likethe most generic currency you
can use it to pay for just aboutanything.

Anny (14:37):
What, can I say one thing about the design of the game
that I really kind of enjoyed,please is actually the color of
the resources, because, well, atleast for carbon and nitrogen,
they reflect the most commoncolors that people use when, you
know, when in Ecosystem Science,when people talk about carbon

(14:57):
cycling, nitrogen cycling. A lotof times they are always black
and blue and just kind of in theconvention. So it kind of
tickled me that that was thosewere the colors in the game as
well.

Brian (15:07):
I'm not sure why they used purple and orange for the
other two. Though that's alittle odd, because I don't
think that's part of convention,but I actually never checked,

Anny (15:14):
yeah, it's beautiful, but yeah, those two I feel like
aren't quite as convention.

Brian (15:20):
This is one of these games where I feel like, when
you're just playing on a regulartable, you never feel like you
have enough space for all thebits and pieces. It doesn't
matter how big your table is.You always feel like something
is in the way, and they nevergive a place where you're
supposed to put a bowl of chips.

Jason (15:34):
Yeah, well, I will say, especially because you're
building a common playing board,especially if you set it up
without that in mind, you're notgoing to leave enough space
around the edges as yourmushroom board grows out bigger
and bigger and bigger inpotentially like very random
directions, depending on howpeople want to lay things out
and how people want to isolatethemselves from other people.

Brian (15:52):
I think that pretty much covers it for the game. As you
move up the carbon track, you'llget little benefits for doing so
as you go up things, it's like,Hey, have a free nitrogen here.
Get a free route, stuff likethat, just like rewards for
moving up that track. Yeah,

Jason (16:05):
I think a key part is that at the end of the game,
it's a point scoring game, andyour goal is to get as many
points as possible. You getpoints based on your little
seedlings, and you only getpoints based on the mushrooms
they have roots on, and thenalso how robust your seedling
is, like how much carbon isabsorbed. So if you have only
one carbon on it, you can onlyscore one of the plant, one of
the mushrooms it has a root oneven if it has on all four it's

(16:27):
touching. If it has two carbons,you do two as three, it turns
into a tree. You can do themall. So there's a high incentive
to turn something into a tree,because then every root that it
has manages to score points atthe end. And the different
mushrooms are worth differentpoints. And some of them are
straightforward, like, Oh, thisis worth two points. And some of
them are more tricky, like, Oh,this is worth one point for
every similar mushroom that istouching it, or this one. And

(16:48):
when you use it, you can cache aresource on and it's worth two
points for every cached resourceand stuff. So there's a few
different ways around there,plus there's some the bonus
goals and some things you canpick up along the way. But
that's it mostly

Brian (16:59):
the points are actually indicated by pine cones. So I
guess it's a it's a gentle nodto reproductive success.

Jason (17:07):
Well, I think in this game, they'd be a fir cone,
wouldn't they?

Brian (17:10):
Ah, yes, you're right, of course, a cone. Sorry, but yeah.
Basically, the the the you'regoing to get more points if you
have a more robust mycorrhizalnetwork with more trees in it,
right? Okay, so, so that's thegame. And we've talked about
this a little bit, but I thinkwe should talk about the
science. So there was an oldsystem. It's actually probably,

(17:34):
I don't know, people probablystill learn this, the whole five
Kingdom systems for life. Soeverything that's microscopic
gets split off into twokingdoms, the Monera and the
protist. And we're not going totalk about those. Everything
that you can see fall eitherinto animals, plants or fungi,
right? So, and I think thatthat's we don't use that system

(17:55):
anymore, because the sort ofphylo--, we know that there's a
lot more diversity in themicroscopic. And actually,
everything you can see is thistiny, little iceberg tip sitting
at the peak of like everythingthat has a nucleus all the
eukaryotic cells. But whatdistinguishes fungi from plants?
What what makes a fungi distinctfrom a plant from an animal?

Anny (18:15):
Well so there are a couple of different things, right? Um,
so we think of when we thinkabout plant cells and animal
cells, a big thing we talk aboutis the fact that their cell
structures are very different,and that it is that is the same
for fungal cells as well. Right?Fungi have very different cell
wall structure compared to plantcells. That's one thing a lot of
folks bring up, and also theyjust grow very differently. They

(18:39):
have very different reproductivelife cycles, and they form
hyphae, instead of the kinds ofroot like structures that we
think of plants as forming. Whatelse

Brian (18:53):
so hyphy is just like a ones. It's like a hyphy is just
like a single cell filament,right? One cell thick and just a
long, thin strand, yeah.

Anny (19:04):
And they can be, you know, Septate or aseptate. So whether
there's actually any divisionsbetween the cells, right? So,
fun fact, for arbuscularmycorrhizal fungi, a lot of them
just have nuclei floating aroundall over the place

Brian (19:18):
Just one big cell with lots of nuclei in it,

Anny (19:21):
kind of, yeah, right. So there's no, like, nice division
separating one nucleus per cell,sort of situation. You just got
nuclei flowing all over theplace.

Brian (19:31):
So let's see if we had to drill down to the bare basics,
like animal cells, no cellwalls. Plant cells have cell
walls. They have got cellulosein them, and most of them can do
photosynthesis, so they're goingto use sun energy to go under.
This is the problem withbiology, right? There are
exceptions. Fungi have rigidcell walls and they have chitin

(19:52):
in them. They actually the samekind of polymer you'd have in an
insect or an arthropodexoskeleton. They use in their
cell walls, and they do not dophotosynthesis.

Anny (20:00):
They do not okay. And they're mostly, they're all
heterotrophic,

Brian (20:05):
meaning they they in the same way that animals have to
eat plants, fungi have to alsoeat plants and other things.
They don't make their ownenergy. They have to break it
down, yep, okay.

Anny (20:14):
Some fungi form relationships with plants in
this, like, very physicallyentwined way. And these are
fungi we called mycorrhizas. Andthere's actually a whole lot of
different types of mycorrhizae.The ones that are kind of
modeled in the game are a typecalled ectomycorrhizae. And so

(20:35):
these are the types of fungithat form mycorrhizas, with
generally trees, oftengymnosperm trees, but also some
other trees as well.

Jason (20:47):
So gymnosperms are kind of like your pines, your firs,
the things that form cones, asopposed to things that form
flowers,

Anny (20:54):
the things that form cones. Yep, that's right.

Brian (20:56):
So, and let's also break down the term Ecto, mycorrhiza.
So Ecto would mean outside. Andwhat's, what's the best thing
for Ecto that we would have?Unfortunately, I think everybody
thinks ectoplasm, but I don'tknow if there's a better thing
that we could use that sort ofhelps people remember Ecto
meaning outside. Any ideas. Theonly other thing I'm thinking is
ectotherm, and that doesn'treally help very much. Ectotherm

(21:18):
would be for cold bloodedanimals, but heated from the
outside.

Anny (21:22):
Yeah. Well, they rely on outside forces to regulate their
temperature. Well, that's thekind of way to think about it, I
suppose.

Brian (21:29):
But so and they're called Ecto because there's, again,
like Anny said, there's severaldifferent types of mycorrhizae.
Some of them will actually sendstructures literally inside the
plant cell itself. They willform structures across the
plasma membrane inside but ectosDon't do that. Their
relationship sort of ends at theplant cell wall. They actually
don't send things inside thecells

Anny (21:49):
well, so Okay, so that's not actually fully correct

Brian (21:53):
no? Okay, tell me

Anny (21:55):
so that is the really kind of confusing part about the name
Ecto mycorrhiza, because they doactually penetrate inside the
plant root, right? They don'tjust stay outside the plant
root.

Brian (22:06):
But do they get past the plasma membrane? Do they
actually send things inside thecells?

Anny (22:11):
They don't usually send things inside the cell, so they
go kind of in between the cellsand form this structure called a
Hartig net, yeah, but it isconfusing for I think the name
is confusing because a lot ofpeople think about the term Ecto
and then assume that they don'tpenetrate inside the roots at
all.

Brian (22:30):
So they do have this very intimate relationship where the
little hyphae, the littlemycelial threads, get completely
inside the root, all in the cellwall, different tissue layers,
but they never actually getinside this the plant cells
themselves.

Jason (22:44):
Well, let's put this way. That's probably how it usually
works. Biology is messy. If youlook hard enough, you will find
an exception, but that seems tobe the general rule.

Brian (22:53):
The general rule is that there's usually something that
breaks the rule in biology. Ifyou look hard enough,

Anny (22:57):
That's true. That's true. I'm like, Yeah, I feel like
that's generally the case. Andnow that you've got me like
making specific certain

Jason (23:04):
well, let's just contrast this with the other major one,
which is the arbuscularmycorrhizae.

Anny (23:08):
And that's true. We can contrast this group with
arbuscular mycorrhizae, which isone other major group of
mycorrhizae. And these generallyform relationships all across
the plant Tree of Life, theyform relationships with trees,
with grasses, with forbs. Oneinteresting plant that they

(23:29):
don't usually form relationshipswith is arabidopsis,

Brian (23:32):
much to the sadness of plant biologists everywhere
since arabidopsis, yeah, sincearabidopsis is the model system
that most work has been donewith on plants, and this very
important relationship

Anny (23:44):
happens to not work with arabidopsis. anyway, but as
Jason was alluding to So, thesearbuscular mycorrhizae. They
form structures inside the plantcells for resource storage and
for Resource Exchange. And sothe arbuscular part of the

(24:04):
arbuscular mycorrhizae refers tothe structures that they form
inside plant cells, calledarbuscules. And so that comes
from the Latin root for treelike so it's like kind of a tree
shaped structure that they forminside the plant cell. And
that's where a lot of theresource exchange happens. They
also form vesicles, which arethese, like kind of big what's

(24:26):
thought of its resource storagebubbles inside plant cells as
well. And then there are twokind of other major groups of
mycorrhizae that we think about.One is ericoid mycorrhizae, they
generally form relationshipswith plants in the Ericaceae so
like blueberries, rhododendronsand so on. And then the last

(24:47):
group is orchid mycorrhizae,which are extremely important.
And orchids are actuallyobligate an obligate symbiosis
with orchid mycorrhizae, becausetheir seeds are so tiny and have
so few resources that theyliterally cannot germinate
without symbiosis with an orchidMycorrhiza,

Brian (25:06):
so obligate, means they have to do it all the time, and
that would contrast withfacultative, where they can do
it. They don't have to do it.Sometimes they can. They don't
really need to. OrchidMycorrhizae are are crazy
because, like orchid seeds aredust. They don't have endosperm.
They have no food inside theseed. So if they don't have

(25:26):
their they steal their nutrientsfrom the mycorrhizae, right?

Anny (25:31):
Exactly in that very early stage of life, they're
essentially the orchids areessentially a parasite.

Jason (25:36):
So here's my question, a lot of orchids, I know they grow
like in the treetops. So arethere mycorrhiza spores, just
like drifting around in therainforest canopy?

Anny (25:46):
there are mycorrhizae spores just drifting around
anywhere, really, even thingsthat we think of that are, you
know, arbuscular, mycorrhizalfungal spores, ectomycorrhizal
fungal spores, you know, they'rejust drifting all over the
place. There's actually evidencefor in tropical rainforest where
you can get these kind of soilmats built up on big tree

(26:11):
branches on top of tall trees,right? Just debris falling down
on these branches. Theydecompose. They kind of form
these like kind of spongylayers. And then you get
epiphytes and other plantsstarting to grow on top of
these, like little bits of soilon a tree. People have found
mycorrhizae in thosecircumstances.

Brian (26:30):
Okay, okay, okay, so we talked about the you've got
ericoid orchid and arbuscularmycorrhizae, those are all kind
of specialists for that. Or dothey have to be mycorrhizae? Or
can they live in other ways?

Anny (26:45):
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are like kind of the
special group here. They are notknown to be very culturable
Unless they are in symbiosiswith a plant. So these are
things that are on the fungalside, obligate with a plant
host. Gotcha. Um, whereas forall the other mycorrhizal fungi

(27:08):
and groups, you can actuallygrow them in culture without a
plant, they will just do that

Brian (27:13):
So we can grow them in a petri plate, like we know how to
do that

Anny (27:16):
You can them on a petri plate, they sometimes will grow
very slowly. You know,especially things like ericoid
mycorrhizae tend to grow prettyslowly, if you have them in
culture, but they will grow.They don't need a plant in order
to, surprise, survive.

Brian (27:28):
So what's neat about the Ecto mycorrhizae is that a lot
of those are kind of like,they're very optional, like a
lot of the things that we thinkof as mushrooms, a lot of like,
very charismatic species that wewould think of for fungi also
form these kind ofrelationships, these Ecto
mycorrhizal relationships,right? Yep. And what is not
controversial is that theydefinitely is resource exchange

(27:50):
happening, that is happening,right?

Anny (27:52):
That is not controversial, yeah. Okay. And so they do form
these mycorrhiza, so themycorrhiza is like that
combination of the fungus andthe root, right? And it is not
controversial that there'sResource Exchange happening,
exchange meaning that there isresource going from one partner
to the other partner, right?Whether that is driven by just

(28:16):
concentration gradients orsource-sink relationships with
just surplus carbon flowingplaces. That's where, kind of
the nitty gritty and whatexactly is happening. How do we
characterize it? So-calledcontroversy can happen

Jason (28:29):
Yeah, but it's a basic idea that there's, there's a
trade going on one way oranother. The plant has lots of
fixed carbon, so food,essentially sugars or fats that
it will trade to the fungus,because that's what plants are
really good at it is they turnsunlight into food, and so
they're giving that to thefungus. And then the fungus,
because of all these littlehyphae that goes through the
soil everywhere, is really goodat getting water and nutrients

(28:52):
from the soil, like thenitrogen, the phosphorus, the
potassium that we talked aboutin the game. And so this sorts
of resource goes from the fungusto the plant, and in theory,
it's a great symbiosis. I knowthere are times where sometimes
one or the other essentially isparasitizing its partner, but in
theory, it's a good symbiosiswhere both are benefiting,

Anny (29:12):
right exactly, and like, not just on the fungal side, not
just because they're able toexplore a much larger area,
given their little hyphae goingeverywhere. But also they're
able to produce enzymes andpartner with other
microorganisms that produceenzymes that plants cannot,
right? So they're able to breakdown leaf litter, other organic

(29:34):
forms of compounds out there,into forms that are easily
accessible by the plant.

Brian (29:41):
You know, in a weird way, it kind of reminds me of the
human gut microbiome that wejust discussed. You've got
microbes in your gut that helpyou break down resources so that
you can digest. Now, plantsdon't have guts, but they do
have roots, and they formassociations with microbes that
effectively are doing a similarthing, helping them access and
break down nutrients that theywouldn't have access to
otherwise. the symbiosis can bea lot tighter for mycorrhizae

(30:04):
and roots, of course, butthere's also that same sort of
complexity. It's like, yes, itcan be symbiotic, but as Jason
likes to point out, the harmonyin nature is an illusion based
on everything pulling as hard asthey can right in the same
direction, and it all just kindof balances out

Anny (30:22):
exactly, yeah, I think the way, you know one of a lot of
people that I talk to in thefield think about it is it's a
mutual exploitation, right? Yep.

Brian (30:32):
Okay, so there's nothing controversial about plants
paying carbon or providingcarbon, and that the fungi
providing rare soil resourceslike nitrogen, potassium and
phosphorus. Now what is a littlecontroversial here is this idea
that the mature trees can focusand move carbon to their
seedlings, specifically ones oftheir own species or genetic

(30:57):
makeup. That is the mother treeconcept, and that is something
that sort of, at least on thethere's a lot of people who
think that the evidence for itis pretty scant.

Anny (31:06):
Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that whole part of
it has a combination ofdifferent things, right? I think
there's no disputing the factthat there have been experiments
done where folks have shownusing labeled carbon, where
carbon from a mature tree or onetree seedling can go via the

(31:29):
fungal connection to anothertree. There, there are some
studies showing that there arethere is discrimination based on
different species and howrelated they are, I think, kind
of where some of the controversyhappens with what we don't
really know yet for sure is howfrequently this actually happens

(31:52):
in nature, in the field, right?Most of these studies have been
done in the greenhouse, whereyou can actually do a lot of
these more complicatedmanipulations to really, really
drill down on the mechanisms.But as you can imagine, it can
be really, really difficult toactually measure any of this in
the field when you're dealingwith an actual mature Doug fir

(32:13):
tree, right? And so the evidencethat we can get from the field
can sometimes be morecircumstantial, right? We can't
drill down in every singlemechanism that needs to happen
in order to fully support this.And also, I think, just to kind
of address the term "the mothertree", right? Hypothesis, I feel

(32:34):
like that whole concept issomething that has been born out
in the public imagination,right? It's not necessarily a
term that the original authorscame up with as a scientific
hypothesis, but because of acombination of the public
imagination and future work thathas been done in the area, it

(32:54):
kind of became something thatpeople refer to as a hypothesis,
which adds to the confusion inthe literature, as you might
imagine.

Brian (33:03):
So it comes from a popular science book written by
the ecologist Suzanne Simard.And a lot of this work and this
idea comes from her specificresearch project. So there,
there was an incredibly popularpublic science book on, you
know, again, the it also inventsthis term of the world, wood
Web. Am I saying that right?

Jason (33:25):
The wood Wide Web

Brian (33:25):
The wood Wide Web, which is this idea of the network of
fungi and exchanging informationand resources and sharing them.
The the point of the book andthis idea of, like, mature trees
nurturing their offspring, wasreally purposely introduced as
this idea of like helping peoplesort of connect to trees and
anthropomorphize them. But theproblem is, is that maybe it

(33:48):
went a little farther than theevidence would fully support, or
it's not clear, or there was a alovely point by point, a
counterpoint to some of theseclaims in these experiments
about the dangers ofanthropomorphizing,
anthropomorphizing trees, andparticularly the Mother Tree
concept, how it doesn't match upwith ecology, how we actually
see that mature trees tend toheavily compete with seedlings

(34:11):
in the soil, and that actuallythey don't really benefit from
having a mature tree available.They do much better if there's
no mature tree around, becauseyou're not seeing as much of
this competition for bareresources, but this very careful
point by point was published inTrends in Plant Biology, and it
sits behind a paywall. It tookme forever to actually find any

(34:32):
place where we'll be able toshare this with our listeners.
So the people that are trying tocounter this as sort of
pseudoscientific or not wellsupported, are not getting their
message out in any way that thepublic in general would be able
to access.

Anny (34:47):
Yeah, and just to kind of make sure that a lot of this is
also represented on both sides,I will say that there is now a
counter point-by-point paperthat was just published at the
end of last year from Simard'sgroup, kind of countering the
point by point that you hadprobably read the paper

(35:09):
published by Justine Karst. Andso there is this very active
back and forth that is happeningright now.

Jason (35:16):
And I think it's important to point out like,
this is how science gets done.It's like one experiment never
completely seals off anything.You need to replicate it.
Sometimes, if things areambiguous, people argue, people
have their own opinions, andit's by the community, engaging
with each other and doing theexperiments and looking at the
work that it gets settled. And,I mean, it probably won't get

(35:37):
settled until you get hard data,because ideally it's like the
one arbiter of all of this isthe data. Now there's the caveat
that there are sometimesdifferent ways to interpret that
data, but at the end of the day,it's like, if it comes to if
there's a conflict between yourhypothesis and the results you
got, the results win. And so atleast that's how science is
supposed to work. And so thisback and forth, this arguing is

(36:01):
the process of how we discovertruth. I like to say that in
science, truth, truth is notwhat emerges like shining and
brilliant. Truth is whatsurvives everything you can
throw at it, and that's how weslowly, slowly, slowly, get a
better idea of how the worldworks.

Brian (36:16):
But what if you're publishing your science in a
popular science book thatcaptures the public imagination.
There's no peer review andautomated correction problems.
Process for things like that.

Jason (36:26):
That's where science communication has to work. And
again, that process is part ofit, of trying to get that out
through good sciencecommunication. I mean, I have
faced this. I have had toessentially contradict people
who bring up these like 50 or 60year old books talking about how
plants can sense people'semotions, and it's like that did
not hold up to replicated study.That was probably an error, and

(36:49):
so some of those, yes, theystill float around, because the
popular science books have amuch wider reach than the
specialized scientificliterature. That's why the
communication of science is soimportant, and let's be honest,
that's part of the reason why wedo this podcast, is because we
want to commute to communicatestuff like that out.

Brian (37:04):
In an interview with Elizabeth Hargrave, Mark
Wootton, they kind oftangentially say that maybe it's
not all figured out. They kindof don't, they don't handle it
face on. They kind of like moveto the side,

Anny (37:16):
right? But I think the main part of the mechanism of
the game that really reflectiveof this kind of mother tree
idea, right? Is the is when inthe game you photosynthesize as
a mature Doug fir, and then youmove that carbon into one of the
mushroom tiles, one of the fungitiles, right? And then, in order

(37:37):
to produce a seedling in andaround those mushroom tiles, you
have to then move that carbonand pay some sort of carbon cost
from the mushroom specificallyin order to make that seeding
right. So I think that is thepart of the mechanism that I
found really interesting thatthey chose to do that because
that that kind of veryspecifically introduces the idea

(38:00):
that that is the way the carbonflow should be happening. And I
might argue that even if right,let's say that there are,
because we have some evidencethat there is some carbon flow
going I think most folks wouldagree that that is not the vast
majority of carbon, the way thecarbon flows through the system.

(38:21):
That's not the vast majority ofwhere a seedling that is
germinating is getting theircarbon from, yep.

Jason (38:27):
And they actually mentioned that in the rule book
that the amount of carbon that aseedling could take up through
these networks is very, verysmall relative to the amount it
can photosynthesize. And thenput in the caveat, but maybe
when you're a newly emergingseedling, that little bit can be
important. I'll be honest. I'mnot sure, I'll be honest. I'm
not sure I get the metaphor oflike. I know I'm supposed to be

(38:48):
like the the mother tree. Like,doing all this work, but all the
work is around the seedlings. Ican only activate the mushrooms
that my seedlings have roots on.It's like, I like. I can only
move the nutrients around to useit for the seedlings. There's no
actual Mother Tree anywhere inthe game, except in, like, the
abstract part of here's myplayer board, but it occupies no

(39:09):
space. I almost feel like thegame works like, Oh, you're just
a bunch of little seedlingstrying to make a go at it. And
this is how it works.

Brian (39:17):
Carbon should just get fed into the network naturally,
right?

Jason (39:20):
Something like that, technically, is kind of what
happens there is that one. Sowith the starting tile, there's
a central mushroom, and thenfour on the outside, and the
central one has the ability thatif there's no carbon anywhere in
the network, it will put carbonout there. And so it kind of has
that,

Anny (39:35):
yeah, but it's just weird that that's coming from a
mushroom, right? Like, I thinkthe part that the game doesn't
make very explicit, is that allof this carbon flowing through a
system is coming viaphotosynthesis, either from the
seedling or from mature trees orany other plants in the
ecosystem. If you want to thinkabout this more realistically,

Jason (39:54):
yeah, but it actually does make a little bit of sense
of why that one's doing it,because it turns out that
central tile on the startingtile is like the mycorrhizae
that is in like every paper everpublished, in terms of what is
forming associations with, withthe Douglas firs, it's
apparently super, super common,and it doesn't have a common

(40:14):
name because it doesn't actuallyform a mushroom, so it only has
a Latin name. So ElizabethHargrave had to make up a name.
She called it Earth lover,because that's basically the
anglicization of its Latin namegeophyllis. I think

Anny (40:27):
I dind't get that at all.

Jason (40:29):
So it's essentially the one that's networking with the
entire forest, most likely, andthat's probably where that
carbon is coming from.

Brian (40:36):
Okay, so undergrove does a reasonable job of modeling
this particular hypothesis, thisparticular of like the sharing
of carbon, of carbon being usedby seedlings, of the exchange of
nutrients, representingmycorrhizae, in particular, Ecto
mycorrhizae, which again, muchmore sort of dynamic, because a
lot of them form mushrooms thatpeople would recognize.

Jason (40:59):
much more photogenic

Brian (41:00):
photogenic. Photogenic. That's the best way to put it,
because you can actually, likewe talk about the all of the
macroscopic life, and it'sreally like fungi. I guess
mycelia can be visible, butusually the only part we ever
see is the above ground partthat comes up sometimes when it
rains a bunch,

Anny (41:18):
right? And that's like such a small fraction of total
fungal diversity that exists theworld, right? All the things
that I study in my lab None,none of them form mushrooms, so
we just keep them on plates, andthey look pretty drab. Sometimes
they look really cool. But

Brian (41:32):
I feel like we don't need a distinct nitpick corner with
this because, or maybe we domake I feel like we've already
had some nitpicks at this pointabout things that maybe we don't
think are quite as they shouldbe. It's mostly it's been about
photosynthesis beingmisrepresented.

Jason (41:44):
I just have one is that I wish the roots, little, little
root triangle tokens you put onthe board were higher contrast
or something, because as thegame progresses, you end up with
more and more of these rootsaround it. They determine what
you can do, which means yourturn gets more and more
complicated as you can only doone thing, but you, instead of
having five things to choosefrom, you actually have like,

(42:04):
12. And finding my roots on theboard can actually be kind of
tricky. It's like, where do Ihave roots? Which mushrooms can
I activate? It's like, okay,I've got that one and that one.
And just like having a littlebit higher contrast, maybe, like
a white outline around them orsomething would have been nice.

Brian (42:20):
Color choices in these games are always hard because it
just ends up as a blegh rainbowand like for for the trees, they
used very tree like colors. Itwas like green and brown and
beige and gray. I think I don'tknow, very neutral tones. Anny,
did you have a nitpick?

Anny (42:37):
Well, I think I we talked a lot about our my science nit
picks, I think I was just veryconfused by the carbon economy
in this game that just did notreflect my understanding of how
the carbon economy generallyworks in these systems. So I
guess that's not really anitpick. That's just a pick. The
part where you have to activatea mushroom was also a little bit
funny to me, but it wasinteresting to me that there was

(43:00):
a there was a component ofcompetition that emerged in this
game that I wasn't expecting, Ithink, as we were playing at one
point where we all had littletree seedlings that were tapped
into, quote, unquote, the samemushroom. And I remember at one
point in when playing the game,we all kind of were trying to

(43:20):
get carbon from that onemushroom, but we didn't want to
get let anyone else have thecarbon. I was trying to think
really hard, like, Is there,like, a nat--, actual analog to
this that would actually happenout in a, yeah, a type
ecosystem? And I'm still tryingto think whether that would
actually happen if there iscompetition via mycorrhizal

(43:45):
provided resources, if that'ssomething that we know for sure
can actually happen?

Brian (43:50):
Interesting. I would be surprised if it, if you've got
multiple individuals tapped intothe same sort of individual,
hyphael body, it would it not bereasonable to think that there
would be competition?

Anny (44:00):
yeah, I think it's a very reasonable assumption that
something could happen. I'm justtrying to think if there's a
good way to test that. I'veactually seen more tests of the
opposite, where you havemultiple mycorrhizal taxa, the
different mycorrhizal fungalspecies that are connected with
the same plant. And so there aremany studies in which folks have

(44:22):
done what are called split rootstudies, where you kind of split
the same plant and its variousroot structures into different
pots, and then in each pot youinoculate kind of different
fungi. And then, in some cases,people have shown that there is
preferential carbon allocationto the fungal partners that are

(44:42):
providing more nutrientbenefits. Oh, interesting, yeah.
So it's kind of, kind of, fromthe plant side, fungi competing
for the plants resources.

Brian (44:53):
Okay, that's interesting. But then I imagine there's also
that, that counter argument, oflike, maybe there just being a
better sink for those nutrients.

Anny (45:00):
Exactly, right? That is the count, and that's why,
that's why this whole field isso hard to get, like, 100%
ironclad. This is exactly what'sgoing on, right? Because you can
measure, you can measure theflow of certain elements from
one part to another part. Youcan measure how much of it there
is. But there's always thisquestion about, Hey, is it just

(45:22):
a source sink dynamic? Is itjust that plants have lots of
surplus carbon that they need toget rid of, and they happen to
do it in this way, and thatcauses the Exchange, or whether
there is, like this sort ofactive, what's called biological
markets theory, where peopleapply the concept to kind of the
economic exchange rate to therate of exchange of carbon

(45:44):
versus other elements. And sothose are kind of two very big
theories that are somewhat incompetition with each other when
it comes to how this exchangesort of actually works in the
real world.

Brian (45:57):
I am terrified to do the science grade for this one,
because I really just, I don'tknow how to judge it anymore. So
actually, it is hard. It isdifficult. I actually would love
to hear each of your so let'smove on to grading. We're going
to do a grade for science and agrade for fun. We each kind of
have our own scale. Wedefinitely do great inflation on
gaming with science. We usuallyassume a B, and then go from

(46:17):
there. And I'd love to hearabout the science grade and your
rationale. You're going to helpme make my own decision here,
because I kind of went into itwith some like, I don't know
about this one, but I'd love tohear the arguments. So who would
like to go first? Jason or Anny?Who's up? Who wants to be first
up?

Anny (46:33):
I want Jason to go first.

Jason (46:35):
Okay, so I'm just kind of making my gut feeling here based
off of the science it's tryingto portray, and all of the
science it's trying to portray,because we focus a lot on the
mother tree, but there's also abunch of the mycorrhizal
symbiosis and the nutrientexchange of I would probably
give it a B plus, and I would dothat because a lot of the

(46:56):
science it shows is correct.It's like plants make
associations with mycorrhizae,there's nutrient exchange that
way. It's especially importantfor getting these, the nitrogen
and the phosphorus and stuff.It's like that part, like that
interconnection between theplants and the fungi, and kind
of getting to the point thatthese, this fungi, form this
whole invisible ecosystem andnetwork underneath the forest,

(47:19):
forest floor, I think iscorrect, the whole Mother Tree
thing, okay, yeah, that dingsits grade a little bit because I
don't know, maybe thecontroversy or the counterpoints
of that weren't fully developedwhen they first started the
game. You can imagine, if youget halfway through developing a
game, and suddenly the sciencechanges like, well, now what do
we do?

Brian (47:39):
It's the danger of science is, it tends to be sort
of shifts as we learn more,right?

Jason (47:43):
Yeah. So, yeah, okay, that part, but I'll be honest,
based on my playing of the game,that part of the metaphor is
actually pretty dispensable.It's like, I forgot that that
was actually part of themetaphor for most of my play of
the game.

Brian (47:55):
That's unfortunate. That's the whole thing.

Jason (47:59):
I don't think it's necessary. I'm playing with
seedlings and fungi, and itworks just fine. And a little
bit of abstraction about theshared pool of resources, but I
never really remembered, like,oh, right, I'm playing a tree
that is trying to help its ownlittle seedlings. I was like,
whatever. So it's like, I'd sayB plus for those reasons, like,
what, most of what it shows isgood. Some stuff, maybe not so

(48:21):
much.

Brian (48:21):
Okay, all right, Anny, what do you think you can
abstain. You can abstain. Youdon't have to give a grade.

Anny (48:27):
Okay. Well, I think it's fun to give a grade. I'll give
it a B minus. I think I'm alittle more disturbed than Jason
about the carbon economythat'sbeing represented in this
game. I just can't get over it.I'm sorry, yeah, but I just
like, remember thinking throughthe carbon economy of the game,
and I'm just like, this is veryconfusing to me. And I think I

(48:48):
appreciate, Jason that youbrought up the fact that it is
in the booklet, or somewherewhere the game developers
clarify that, like, you know,the amount of carbon that any
seedling is getting from itsfungal symbiotic partner is like
a tiny, tiny fraction of all thecarbon that it needs to actually
grow and become a tree, whichthat is very important. And I

(49:09):
think that is a really importantthing. And I would hate for
someone playing the game to,like, get the sort of misguided
idea that when tree seedlingsgrow up like they're literally
relying on the fungal partner toprovide all the carbon they need
to get into being a tree. So Ifeel like that's what brings my

(49:31):
grade down to a B minus. I agreewith you, Jason and that, like,
the whole Mother Tree metaphorisn't super you can play it
without really thinking aboutit. And honestly, I wasn't
really thinking about it until,like, after being done with the
game, I was like, Oh, why did wedo that? Oh, I bet it's because
of this thing. But yeah, I thinkthe things that it does well is

(49:51):
introducing the fact that plantsinteract with fungi and often in
a mutualistic way, and thatmutualism involves a resource
flowing from the plant to thefungus, and then the fungus to
the plant, and they work ondifferent they capitalize on
different resources and mutuallyexploit each other for different

(50:11):
resources. So I think that partwas well developed in the game.

Brian (50:16):
Maybe if they had done orchids instead of Douglas firs,
because we know orchids actuallydo need to exploit very
specifically. So I think I'mgonna stick with my original
opinion, and I think I'm gonnagive an Elizabeth Hargrave game
a C,

Jason (50:33):
oh, that's harsh.

Brian (50:34):
It is harsh.

Anny (50:35):
I was trying to be a little less harsh

Brian (50:37):
yeah. And I think, you know, if she wants to apply for
a regrade. That's fine, Iunderstand. But the problem is,
is that when I think about ascience game, my biggest
concern, and the games that havegotten low grades from me, is
feeling like I'm worried thatpeople will get their good facts
mixed up with their bad facts.And unfortunately, the metaphor

(50:57):
here, while it's clarified in ain a footnote in the game, in
the rule book, that there's onlya small fraction of the carbon.
That is not how the game plays.You cannot grow your seedling
into a tree until it's gottenthree carbon and the ability for
it to get carbon off the fungiis the most important thing in
the whole game. That's how youscore. That's everything is
based on how much carbon are youabsorbing. You literally move up

(51:19):
the track to win the game basedon absorbing carbon from fungi.
It's the whole thing. And ifthat's the weakest part of the
whole story, then unfortunately,and I hate this, because this is
very cool. I love that it's agame about mycorrhizae. I love
that the things about gettingother rare nutrients, that's
fine, but this whole idea ofthen moving that carbon back
onto the seedlings, that's notnearly as solid as it's being

(51:43):
portrayed. So I do worry that ifsomebody just plays this game,
it reinforces ideas that may notactually end up holding up to
the test of time. So I'm goingto stick with my C I'm very
sorry. You know you can applyfor a re grade. Okay? We can
discuss it in more detail.

Jason (51:58):
Now, we talk about the Yeah, we talk about having to
make compromises between fun andreality, I know, and I'm
gathering that there were someof those compromises made at
when I skimmed the designerdiary, they specifically
mentioned that earlier versionswere much more scientifically
accurate, but really not allthat fun. So they definitely
intentionally made choices totry to make it a game you would
like to play first, and thathopefully reflect the science.

(52:21):
So let's get to the gameplay.Yeah,

Brian (52:22):
I yeah, I still think they could have done the same
thing with orchids, and thenit's orchids, and everybody
loves orchids. Orchids are socool,

Jason (52:28):
yes, but orchids don't make mushrooms

Brian (52:30):
well, but we could orchid one way.

Jason (52:34):
Yes, they do make orchids, but I think they This
was because Elizabeth Hargravemakes games around things she
loves she made she's a mushroomfan because she's a, yeah, she's
a birder, she's a mushroomer,butterflyer,

Brian (52:47):
but she's not an orchid per- an orchid-er

Jason (52:50):
I don't know. Maybe that will be the next one. So anyway,
Brian, your turn to go first.What's the grade?

Brian (52:56):
For fun? Um, I'm just a solid B on this. I liked it. I
think you probably from talkingto you, Jason, I think, you
know, it would be nice if it wasa different sort of engine game,
right, where you kind of get todo a whole bunch of things all
at once, the separation in timeI didn't love. I love the little
mushrooms. I think thecomponents are great. I think
it's a pretty game, and it's agame I'd be happy to play. So I
will give it a B.

Jason (53:16):
Anny what about you?

Anny (53:17):
I don't play board games a lot.

Brian (53:19):
Oh, you're not a nerd?

Anny (53:21):
I am a certified nerd.

Jason (53:22):
Hey, hey, hey, there are many, many flavors of nerds. Not
just board game nerds. Don't beelitist, Brian

Brian (53:28):
Sorry, sorry, sorry

Anny (53:30):
I'm just gonna give it an A because I don't play a lot of
board games, and it was reallyfun. I had a great time, and I
love the mushroom art. I'm veryexcited and happy that, like,
mushrooms are entering the justlike regular art zeitgeist, and
now there's mushroom themedanything you can get, like at

(53:51):
Target or anywhere. That's verytrue. And yeah, I just like,
when I was playing the game, Ifound myself picking the
mushrooms that looked theprettiest and play them becase
why not?

Jason (54:01):
Oh yeah, you were always going after the You were always
going after the purplemushrooms. That's true.

Anny (54:05):
I was always going after the purple mushrooms because
they looked really cool. Andthat's right, that it's okay,
that you don't have a whole lotof strategy when you put down
mushrooms. So I'm gonna give itan A. It was a fun time.

Brian (54:16):
All right. What about you? Jason?

Jason (54:18):
I'm probably gonna give this about a B plus as well,
just because, like, it's fun, Ifelt a little frustrated because
I kept feeling like I wanted todo more. And maybe it's because
it was billed as an enginebuilding game, and I never felt
I got an engine going. to me, ifI built an engine then turns
late in the game should be morepowerful than turns early in the

(54:39):
game. And I never really feltlike I got to that point.
There's also just a lot to keeptrack of. So like the little
flipping the tokens over to say,Oh, I've used this type of
mushroom. I can't do that againuntil I refresh it somehow. that
was, I'm sure it involves somesort of control over like and
strategic choices, but mostly itwas something that I tended to

(55:00):
forget about. And it's like, oh,wait, could I do that? It's
like, okay, yes, I can, and I'ddo it, like, after the fact. So
there's a lot of things to keeptrack of. Is a little bit it's
kind of like getting a flowstate is like, there's just
enough to push you, but not somuch you feel overwhelmed. And
when there's near the end of thegame, when there were like, 10
different mushrooms I couldactivate, and trying to figure
out which one is the moststrategically optimal one for me

(55:21):
to activate like that was thatwas starting to get a little bit
of outside that range. So Iwouldn't mind playing this. I
would actually like to play thisagain several more times. Yeah,
now that I

Brian (55:30):
I'll bring it on Saturday. We'll play it on
Saturday.

Jason (55:32):
Okay, because basically part of that is the learning the
game. The more I play a game,the more I'm able to make some
of that sort of unconscious andassumed, and so I'm able to
focus more on strategy. So Iwant to play this a few more
times to see if I can get tothat point.

Brian (55:45):
This is another problem with the gaming with science
project is we're constantlyplaying something new. We play
something a couple of times, andthen we have to move on to the
next thing, right?

Jason (55:54):
Let's be honest, most of the board games on my shelves
have gotten played like half adozen times or less total in
their entire lifespan, a gameyou go back to 10,20 times is
like a winner. It's solid,

Brian (56:05):
yeah, but they look beautiful on the shelf. So they
do

Anny (56:09):
Brian and Jason. I just, I actually just thought of this,
like, fun, funny example for,like, the mycorrhizal network
thing. Um, 2... 2, 3 years agonow, I was hiking in Patagonia,
so in southern Chile, in theTorres del Paine National Park.
And one of the people that Iended up kind of walking a lot

(56:31):
with was this woman who was fromChile. She mostly spoke Spanish.
I speak very little Spanish, andshe spoke very little English.
And those were very long hikes.And at some point we were trying
to, like, talk about what weeach did. And she was asking me
about my research, which I wasextremely incapable of
explaining in Spanish. So it wastrying to really hard to, like,

(56:54):
you know, talk about plants andfungi. And then at a certain
point she suddenly said, oh,like, Avatar,

Jason (57:02):
yes, I was gonna bring that up. Like, the whole
mycelium network was theinspiration for Avatar. There's
that one scene with the twoscientists

Anny (57:09):
That one scene where they connect, they're like, like,
little cables into the tree, andthen they, like, have a little,
like, their USB, course, right?Like,

Jason (57:18):
yeah. But there's an earlier scene with the two
scientists, like, one is poking,is like, look here, and you see
over here, like, Look signaltransduction. And it's like,
yeah, those are actualscientists, because they're so
excited that they've put wireson trees and there's a signal
going between them, yeah.

Anny (57:33):
And so, like, this was just like, a crazy moment for
me, like, right this, just like,complete stranger I met in Chile
while hiking. The moment ofconnection that she could make
to me, trying, very poorly toexplain my research in Spanish,
was Avatar, right? Like, that'sthe image that came to her mind
when she suddenly made thatconnection. And I mean, I was

(57:57):
kind of just like, yeah, kind ofnot exactly like, yes, kind of
right, like,

Brian (58:02):
Less bioluminescence,

Jason (58:04):
yeah? But I think that's an important point for we talked
about, like, the the mother treeand stuff, these things, even
when they get it kind of wrong,it can form an entry point where
you say, okay, yeah. Like,that's sort of based off of
this. And now we can talk aboutthe reality, which is more
complicated and messy and stuff,

Brian (58:21):
narratives are useful, right? That's, I mean, we're
telling stories in science allthe time, and even a bad story
can be a good starting point.All right, well, I think with
that, it's been a greatconversation. Thank you for
talking about a spicy scientificcontroversy, which what that
means for us is that peoplewrite passive aggressive papers
every couple of months, that'sright.

Anny (58:45):
Well, thank you so much for having me on. This was
really fun, and I had a greattime playing the game with you
guys.

Brian (58:49):
So Jason, do you want to take us out?

Jason (58:52):
All right. Well, I think we're going to wrap it up there.
So thank you, Anny, for comingon the show. Thank you everyone
for tuning in. Have a greatmonth and happy gaming

Brian (59:01):
and have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya. This
has been the gaming with SciencePodcast copyright 2025 listeners
are free to reuse this recordingfor any non commercial purpose,
as long as credit is given togaming with science. This
podcast is produced with supportfrom the University of Georgia.
All opinions are those of thehosts, and do not imply
endorsement by the sponsors. Ifyou wish to purchase any of the
games that we talked about, weencourage you to do so through

(59:22):
your friendly local game store.Thank you and have fun playing
dice with the universe. You.

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S2E04 - Undergrove (Mycorrhizae mushrooms)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S2E04 - Undergrove (Mycorrhizae mushrooms)