The soil beneath our feet, home to fungi, bacteria, beetles and worms, may not seem like the most jazzy environment. But if you stuck a powerful enough microphone in the soil, you’d be surprised at how hopping it is, acoustically speaking. That has led to the question: Are there sounds that actually encourage microorganisms to grow?
The answer, published in a study in the journal Biology Letters, is yes. Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. If the lab findings can be replicated in nature, then sound could be a new tool for improving the health of forests, encouraging microbes to take root and thrive.
Scientists have put microphones in environments of all kinds, including tropical trees and coral reefs, and have found that often the more complex the soundscape, the more diverse and healthy the inhabitants.
Off the coast of Adelaide, Australia, scientists found that the recorded sounds of healthy oyster reefs could lure new oyster larvae to areas destroyed by overfishing. Sound also seems to help some bacteria grow, said Jake Robinson, a microbial ecologist in Australia. It was this work with bacteria that inspired Robinson and his colleagues to see if the same were true of a beneficial fungus.
The scientists lined tubs with soundproofing foam to make quiet places for their fungi and then put petri dishes with a dab of T. harzianum in the tubs. Once a day, they played some of the dishes 30 minutes of white noise drawn from a YouTube video intended to help people with tinnitus.
“To begin with, it looked like not much was happening,” Robinson said. Then, around Day 3, the fungi treated with sound went into overdrive. T. harzianum spores became bright green in color, and the white noise dishes were soon a mossy viridian. By Day 5, the researchers were able to calculate that exposing the fungi to sound had made them grow seven times as fast and produce more than four times as many spores. —
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2024 The New York Times Company