Department of Economics, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jul 6;118(27). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2020961118.
The interaction between land plants and mycorrhizal fungi (MF) forms perhaps the world's most prevalent biological market. Most plants participate in such markets, in which MF collect nutrients from the soil and trade them with host plants in exchange for carbon. In a recent study, M. D. Whiteside et al. [Curr. Biol. 29, 2043-2050.e8 (2019)] conducted experiments that allowed them to quantify the behavior of arbuscular MF when trading phosphorus with their host roots. Their experimental techniques enabled the researchers to infer the quantities traded under multiple scenarios involving different amounts of phosphorus resources initially held by different MF patches. We use these observations to confirm a revealed preference hypothesis, which characterizes behavior in Walrasian equilibrium, a centerpiece of general economic equilibrium theory.
陆地植物与菌根真菌（MF）之间的相互作用可能构成了世界上最普遍的生物市场。大多数植物都参与这种市场，MF 从土壤中收集养分，并与宿主植物进行交易，以换取碳。在最近的一项研究中，M.D.Whiteside 等人[Curr. Biol. 29, 2043-2050.e8 (2019)]进行了实验，使他们能够量化菌根真菌在与宿主根系交换磷时的行为。他们的实验技术使研究人员能够根据不同 MF 斑块最初持有的不同磷资源数量的多种情况来推断交易的数量。我们利用这些观察结果来验证一个显示偏好假说，该假说描述了瓦尔拉斯均衡中的行为，这是一般经济均衡理论的核心。
