Root tragedy of the commons: Revisiting the mechanisms of a misunderstood theory

Fine root density in the soil is a plant functional trait of paramount importance for plant ecology and agriculture. Fine root proliferation by plants involves complex plant strategies that may depend on various abiotic and biotic factors. Concretely, the root tragedy of the commons (RToC) is a behavioral strategy predicted by game theory models in which interacting plants forage for soil resources inefficiently. Generally, researchers assume that the RToC is a proactive competition strategy directly induced by the non-self roots. In this opinion, I recall Hardin’s original definition of the tragedy of the commons to challenge this notion. I argue that the RToC is a suboptimal phenotypically plastic response of the plants based on the soil resource information exclusively, and I discuss how this alternative perspective carries important implications for the design of experiments investigating the physiological mechanisms underlying observable plant root responses.