Graduate research fellow investigates how fungi and fire enable pine savanna ecosystem to thrive

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LAWRENCE — For most humans, fire symbolizes destruction and death. Yet nature often adapts to fire and can wield it as a creative force. For example, in the pine savannas of the southeastern U.S., fire acts as a chrysalis from which grasslands and forests spread new stems and unfurl fresh leaves.

Jacob Hopkins, a graduate student with the Kansas Biological Survey and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas, researches how a hidden ally helps plants and trees in this ecosystem prosper with fire: the fungi that live in the soil and among the decomposing leaves and plant matter atop the soil, called litter.

“In the pine savannas, we think of fire as a reset switch,” Hopkins said. “It prevents the pines from taking over and can prevent invasive species from coming in. It rejuvenates the ecosystem, and after the ecosystem burns we see a higher diversity of species — particularly grassland species.”

With a recently announced National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Hopkins will spend the next several years investigating the relationship between fire and the way fungi and plants in pine savannas support each other, dubbed “mutualisms.” The NSF Graduate Research Fellowships pay U.S.-citizen students $34,000 per year plus a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance over three years.

“A plant-fungal mutualism is when a mycorrhizal fungi species forms an association with the roots of a host plant,” Hopkins said. “There will often be an exchange of resources between the two. With grassland species, fungi give plants phosphorus and get carbon or sugar in return. But we also see mutualisms in trees, where trees get nitrogen from fungi and fungi, in turn, receive carbon or sugar. Forming these associations can help plants resist attacks by insects or pathogens, or it can increase competitive ability of the plant for growing in an ecosystem.”

Hopkins’ work will include field studies of ...

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