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Student's fungus survey may help explain revegetation rates after wildfires By
Lindsay A. Robbins
Andrea Linton hopes spring will last a long time. It is her favorite season. Not because of the blooming flowers or the chirping birds but because the mushrooms are back. "My friends make fun of me," Linton said. But she is OK with her love of fungus. "There is something magical about mushrooms," Linton said. "They are forbidden. You aren't supposed to touch them." Linton, 21, said she has a lot of fun learning about the fungus kingdom. She is intrigued with the function of fungus. She explained that fungus plays the villain, the good-guy, and the superhero in the forest ecosystem. Fungus can cause disease in people, help plants grow and beautify the forest floor. "It is a one-man play," Linton said. "They are weird, interesting and bizarre. Some have teeth-like structures that look like daggers." Linton was introduced to fungi and mycology, the study of fungi, three years ago in her field botany course at Utah State University. She plans to graduate with a degree in biology with departmental honors in December. Part of the requirement for the honors program is to complete a senior research project. For her project, Linton wanted to research the role fungus plays in the regrowth of plants in a forest burned by fire. She became curious about the survival of fungi after fires blazed through Cache Valley in July. She proposed her project to URCO, Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunity, asking for a grant to fund her research. She received $104 from URCO and $104 from the biology department. She began her research in August is scheduled to complete her thesis this spring. Her specific focus is on the effects wildfires have on populations of Mycorrhizal fungi belonging to the Gigasporaceae family. She asked Dr. Bradley Kropp, associate professor in the biology department, if he would advise her on her research. "It was the scariest thing of the whole project asking someone I didn't know to help me," Linton said. "He has invested a lot of time, a whole year of meeting with me." Kropp said he was excited to get involved in Linton's work because he himself is a "fungus nut." Beneath his office desk sits four past issues of Mycologist, a popular journal all about fungi. Kropp said it is the magazine for anyone hooked on fungi. He said he reads it just for fun. Kropp also agreed to be involved in the project because he recognized the type of student Linton was. He said he knew he would need to be more of a mentor than a motivator or teacher for Linton. "She is a good student," Kropp said. "It is better to let students like that out on their own. She is really motivated by ideas. It is kind of uncommon." He also said her research has some practical applications for anyone interested in revegetation. He explained that not many people understand the role fungus has on plant growth. For foresters trying to revegetate a burned area, Linton's research could be helpful. "Many people don't know about fungus. It is obscure," Kropp said. "They're pretty important. They do so much." Mycorrhizal fungi especially do a lot for plants. They form symbiotic relationships. They help their hosts obtain water, minerals, and nutrients; in return, the plant provides carbohydrates for the fungus. The fungus acts as a wick pulling nutrients and water into the plant's roots. The fungi live in the roots of 90 percent of plants. Some plants don't need the fungi relationship because they complete their life cycle in the springtime before the water is dried up. But most, such as pine trees, have this beneficial relationship with the Mycorrhizal fungus. Most of the plant species in Cache Valley that were burned by the fires need the fungus. Linton wanted to determine the amount of Mycorrhizal fungi in burned and unburned areas. Her first and most physically straining part of the experiment was collecting soil samples. She collected soil from unburned and burned plots in three areas in Cache Valley: Cliffside, Millville and North Logan. Hiking to the tops of mountains and collecting soil proved to be more difficult than she expected. "It took forever," Linton said. "I rock-climbed, slipped down ravines, and put a lot of dirt in baggies. I had to wash my pants three times." Linton collected soil up to six centimeters below the surface, and from 6 to 10 centimeters below the surface in all of the areas. She wanted to know how deep the fires affect the soil. After collection, with the help of two friends, Joe Kemp and Natalie White, Linton recorded the number of fungi spores found in the soil. She had planned to put the soil in petri dishes and look at it under microscope, hoping to easily identify the spores. But that also proved to be more difficult that expected. The fungi spores were the same color as the soil. So with the advice of Kropp, Linton strained the soil, leaving the microscopic spores and silt left in the strainer. She placed the spores and silt in a 4-inch-long plastic tube and then added sugar water. She spun the tube until the spores separated from the silt and floated in the sugar water. Under a microscope, she could count the golden fungi spores. Linton said it was a complicated process that took 19 hours to complete. Kemp and White then coded the samples. Linton didn't want to know which samples came from which area or from which depth in the surface. Linton said she did this so she could be as accurate as possible when analyzing the data. She didn't want to be biased, wanting her hypothesis to be correct. Her hypothesis stated there would be more fungi spores in the soil in unburned areas than in burned areas. But her hypothesis was wrong. She found that in the soil collected from 6 to 10 centimeters below the surface, the concentration of fungi was the same between the burned and unburned areas. From zero to 6 centimeters, there were more fungi spores in the burned areas than in the unburned areas. Linton said further experiments are needed to determine why the concentrations of fungi were greater in the burned areas than in the unburned. She said for now the results are inconclusive and that she may want to further her research in graduate school. Linton said all of this research has given her more than just information about fungus. "It's given me the confidence that I can do this," Linton said. "I can do research." Kropp said Linton has developed skills that will pay off in the world of science and she is the type of student to succeed.
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