In fact, across a large mycelial mat connected to many plants, Toby Kiers, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and her colleagues found that fungi could use a strategy of “buy low, sell high,” by moving phosphorus from places of abundance to places of scarcity, where it will fetch a higher price. See Matthew D. Whiteside et al., “Mycorrhizal Fungi Respond to Resource Inequality by Moving Phosphorus from Rich to Poor Patches across Networks,” Current Biology 29, no. 12 (June 2019): R570–72.
