alt Hacker NewsI gather that the claims about mycorrhizal networks have been overstated or at least the evidence is limited. e.g. see this episode of Science Fictions
https://sciencefictionspod.substack.com/p/episode-91-entangl...
But even in the most conservative reading of the evidence, there is a lot of amazing ecology going on here. And the economic analogy seems apt. I buy her argument that it's worth investing a lot more to explore these interactions.
Stepping back - evolution has had a vastly greater amount of time to deal with economic & game theoretic situations than we have. Learning more about what type of strategies have survived the test of time could be very important. Especially as we are currently at the beginning of an explosive change in our own ecosystem (and I ain't talking about biodiversity or climate change...)
I know people that work in mycology and plant pathology. My impression is that the "wood wide web" is generally a well-accepted and well-established concept. It's commonly accepted that mycorrhizal networks exist, that they benefit both plant and fungus, and that they allow propagation of resources between trees. There is some debate over the anthropomorphisation and the idea of "mother trees", but that's kind of what you expect when it comes to science popularisation in the media.
FWIW the book "Entangled Life" is okay as a popular science book, but Sheldrake isn't really a practicing research mycologist, so you can't expect too much from it scientifically. And it has some... slightly weird bits (do you really want to picture the author rolling around naked in some leaves?).