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NSF backs SOU study of oak, fungi By DANI DODGE ASHLAND -- A Southern Oregon University professor has received a $663,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a five-year study of the interaction of underground fungus and oak trees at Whetstone Savanna just outside of Medford. "It's easy to see how plants interact above ground," said Dr. Darlene Southworth, a biology professor at SOU since 1979. "But this is looking underground, especially to see if fungi connect the trees to each other." The National Science Foundation granted a total of $4.8 million to three universities that are collaborating on the research. The other researchers are at University of California, Davis, and University of California, Riverside. The biologists will determine whether individual oaks are linked by fungi on their roots, creating a network that allows the trees to transfer carbon and nutrients. Southworth chose the Whetstone Savanna -- a 144-acre, mile-long tract of land between West Gibbon Road and Newland Road -- because of the diversity of habitat, easy access and because it is owned and protected by The Nature Conservancy. "What Darlene Southworth and her crew have to offer in addition to the basic knowledge of fungi and interactions is ideas about what we need to do to preserve that site," said Darren Borgias, stewardship ecologist at The Nature Conservancy. "And what they are learning may also be helpful to other land managers. "It is somewhat phenomenal to have this caliber of research going on in our back yard." The grant is one of seven from the National Science Foundation for the study of biocomplexity. Instead of looking at individual species and habitats, biocomplexity seeks to understand how the systems work together. Southworth thought she was a long shot for the grant. For the last few years, the 58-year-old professor has specialized in examining how flowering plant sperm and eggs attract and attach to each other. But she believes her emphasis on getting undergraduate students involved in the research as well as the cooperation of three universities gave her a leg up on the competition. The $663,000 grant will pay for equipment, students' salaries and summer stipends for Southworth. Each of the three institutions will work at an individual site and each will study a variety of oak. "If we only worked on one site it could have been an idiosyncrasy," Southworth said. "We hatched the idea of multiple sites and doing the same thing on all of them. It's a very collaborative project." The scientists and students will take samples of the environment as well as put plastic tubes into the earth to watch and photograph how the roots grow. "It might mean that plant communities are really structured by invisible fungi underground and that relationships between plants are mediated by fungi," Southworth said. "At the end of it we'll understand better the nature of the biocomplexity." Most people assume that trees are individual entities. "This would mean that all the trees in an area are interconnected." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA