Research into the ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor found that cadmium exposure can trigger stress signals in parts of the fungal network that never directly encounter the metal. The work points to a distributed internal signalling system capable of propagating environmental information over distance.
That matters because it offers a biological example of local disturbance becoming network-wide awareness without a central controller, a useful pattern for resilient sensing and distributed response systems.
https://www.vub.be/en/news/fungi-communicate-with-one-another-in-presence-metal
