Science Alert reports:

Hidden inside tree trunks, between grains of soil, deep within our bodies, and below our feet, fungi seem to wind their way into everything.

But did you know fungi actually live in the ocean, too?

New research published in PLOS Biology reveals the overlooked role of marine fungi in the carbon cycle by zooming in on the seawater and sediments that line an Arctic fjord in Norway.

We’re only just starting to understand how widespread fungi are on this planet, and how much they contribute to the global carbon cycle.

Marine fungi are easily overlooked because they’re microscopic, but that doesn’t mean their impact is small.

For the first time, scientists quantified how much fungi in marine sediments are incorporating dissolved, free-floating amino acids into their bodies, trapping carbon and nitrogen.

“Our study shows that fungi in the Arctic Ocean can contribute significantly to carbon storage in sediments via their highly efficient metabolism,” explains geomicrobiologist William Orsi of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU Munich) in Germany.

“This is important because it is a previously unknown mechanism of microbial carbon storage in Arctic fjords, key geological settings that store more than 10 percent of all the carbon buried below the seafloor.” [Continue reading…]