This month, good news just keeps coming! We are very pleased to announce that Jaak Pärtel received the 2nd prize at the natural sciences field for his bachelor’s thesis “Global Distribution and Abundance of Mycorrhizal Fungi” at the 2025 national student research paper competition.

Jaak’s bachelor’s thesis was based on DNA samples isolated from soil and roots collected by plant and soil ecologists around the world, from which the taxa of mycorrhizal fungi, also known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, were determined. As the main results, Jaak found in his work that rhizophilic mycorrhizal fungi with a predominance of intra-root biomass are more widespread in the world, and there were generally no differences in distribution between families, except for the family Glomeraceae, which was both more globally widespread and locally more abundant in communities. It was also found that there is a methodological difference in the proportions of mycorrhizal fungi groups identified between soil and root samples. The work suggests that considering these functional groups in the biogeography of spore fungi may reveal previously unknown patterns and deserves continued research.

Congratulations, Jaak!