Week 5 Briefing: Sanctions and chemical warfare

Chemical suppression of rivals — allelopathy and antifungal defence — read against the negotiated exchanges of week 2.

Stained arbuscular mycorrhizal structures inside a plant root, with a 50 micrometre scale bar.

Rajarshi Rit · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Case file 05

Case file 05
Date
22 March 2027
Metaphor
Sanctions and chemical warfare — suppressing a rival rather than negotiating with it
Phenomenon
Allelopathy and antifungal secondary metabolites produced by ectomycorrhizal fungi, suppressing competing fungi and pathogens in the surrounding mycorrhizosphere

Before the session

Read the assigned material on juglone and on mycorrhizosphere antibiosis. Bring one candidate answer to what, if anything, is being “sanctioned” in each case, and who benefits.

In the session

Compare a sanction (a threat meant to change behaviour) with a chemical weapon (an effect that does not require the target to notice it coming). Sort this week’s two phenomena into one category or the other, or both.

Afterwards

Note whether either phenomenon requires the attacker to know it has a target at all — this is the same question week 9 returns to at a longer timescale.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

Teaching team