Mafia Mushrooms: underground cooperation and intimidation

Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Toby Kiers is interested in millenia-old underground biological 'markets', entwined in the roots of plants and trees. Toby is researching plants' relationships with microbes, and the economics behind their co-operation, or lack of it, in a thriving trade of essential phosphorus, nitrates and sugars between plants and fungi. In another partnership Toby is interested in - science and design - her lab has produced a stop motion video and a video game to help communicate how fungal networks trade nutrients with host plants.