Overview

• A Yale-led team sampled wood and soil from 150 trees across 16 species in Connecticut’s Yale-Myers Forest to identify bacteria, fungi and viruses within living wood.
• Analysis revealed that an average tree hosts between 100 billion and one trillion microbial cells concentrated in heartwood and sapwood rather than in soil, leaves or roots.
• Heartwood communities were dominated by anaerobic microbes while sapwood harbored aerobic bacteria and fungi, with each tree species showing its own signature microbiome.
• Laboratory tests showed these internal microbes actively produce gases and cycle nutrients inside woody tissues, suggesting roles in internal nutrient transport and carbon storage.
• Investigators are now probing how these wood microbiomes affect tree vitality and exploring their potential for forest management and carbon cycling applications.