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Ectomycorrhizal symbiosis between roots and fungi is founded on the movement of carbon from plants to fungi, and of soil resources from fungi to plants. Framing this movement as a trade can facilitate an understanding of how this mutualism has developed over evolutionary time, but fails to explain experimental observations of carbon and nutrient movement. Here, I propose that source–sink dynamics are an essential basic model to explain the movement of plant and fungal resources, which may be modified by plant immune response, variability in fungal molecular repertoires, and competition in the soil. Source–sink dynamics provide testable hypotheses to illuminate mechanisms of ectomycorrhizal resource movement and its consequences for mutualism stability and forest function under climate change.