S1 E6: Fish, Forests and Fungi with Anne Polyakov

Anne Polyakov is a PhD student in the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management Program at the University of Washington. 

Anne's PhD research covers a variety of animals and ecosystems, including fungal communities along salmon streams. Recently, she spent a summer with the UW Alaska Salmon Program studying ecosystems along three streams, collecting data to track the uptake of salmon nutrients beyond the water’s edge, and how fungi might play a role in this intricate process.

She is passionate about interdisciplinary research at the intersection of ecology and statistics, utilizing a variety of modeling techniques to better understand ecological dynamics.

Read our recent article on Anne's research in Alaska: https://environment.uw.edu/news/2022/11/fish-forests-and-fungi/

https://environment.uw.edu/podcast

Transcript

00;00;00;08 - 00;00;20;25
Anne Polyakov
Yeah, it's like the whole package because, like, you're out there, like, you, like, have this experimental study design you've been working forever on and all the just prep work that comes with was like doing a trip like this. But once you're there and everything just comes together and then you're just like traipsing around in the forest and it's, it's pretty amazing.

00;00;22;07 - 00;01;11;06
Sarah Smith
From the University of Washington College of the Environment. This is FieldSound,. Mushrooms have had a long and mysterious history in our world. Egyptian hieroglyphs depict mushrooms as gifts from the gods. In the 1970s, penicillin, a life saving antibiotic, was discovered in a fungus. More recently, video games and TV shows have centered on a fictional zombie fungus infecting humans.

00;01;12;02 - 00;01;46;03
Sarah Smith
We're fascinated by fungi. They're culturally and nutritionally significant. And yet only about 4% of fungal species have been characterized. We still have much to learn. Anne Polyakov is a Ph.D. student in the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management Program at the University of Washington. She's passionate about introduce a plenary research at the intersection of ecology and statistics, utilizing a variety of modeling techniques to better understand the ecological dynamics.

00;01;46;23 - 00;02;07;06
Sarah Smith
Her Ph.D. research centers on fungal communities along salmon streams. Recently, she spent a summer with the UW Alaska Salmon Program studying ecosystems along three streams, collecting data to track the uptake of salmon nutrients beyond the water's edge, and how fungi might play a role in this intricate process.

00;02;09;14 - 00;02;34;26
Anne Polyakov
By advisor Andrew Berdahl as part of the Alaskan Salmon Program. And he invited me my second year at the University of Washington to come up there and just help him out with stuff. When I was up there, we started talking about these systems and the salmon coming in, and there had been a bunch of researchers that had looked at the effect of these salmon nutrients on plant communities and on the soil, like how the salmon nutrients flowed through the soil.

00;02;35;19 - 00;02;59;29
Anne Polyakov
But no one had looked at the fungi. And I think it's just because people don't really think about fungi that much. I think they are these days a little more. But yeah, and so we started asking those questions. I looked at the literature and there was practically nothing except this one guy, Allan Larocque. So I reached out to him and he was looking at the effect of salmon nutrients on fungi in in Canada along the B.C. coastline.

00;03;00;18 - 00;03;14;03
Anne Polyakov
And yeah, and he's like, You should do this in Alaska. And it'll be a great complementary study. So he actually came out with me and we spent a summer collecting data up there and avoiding grizzly bears and all that sort.

00;03;16;15 - 00;03;26;02
Sarah Smith
It's like one big like it's fascination. And also just like I'm so scared of grizzly bears, I don't know what it is, but like, I'm obsessed with them, too.

00;03;26;14 - 00;03;27;28
Anne Polyakov
Me too. Yeah.

00;03;28;05 - 00;03;35;07
Sarah Smith
One of the cool parts about being a scientist for sure is getting to do that field work and, like you said, kind of feel alive and connect all the dots with your work.

00;03;35;21 - 00;03;57;28
Anne Polyakov
I feel like the fact that, you know, there's these other predators out there, like it makes you feel more alive in a lot of ways. Like your senses just come alive. Like you're constantly like scanning the environment. You're like, you're really you feel more like like a more fulfilling sensory experience, I guess. And I just that week in Alaska was just amazing.

00;03;57;28 - 00;04;27;26
Anne Polyakov
Like, I still remember it as this. Yeah, just one of the coolest experiences of my life. So yeah, yeah, it's like the whole package because like, you're out there, like, you like, have this experimental study design you've been working forever on and all that. Just prep work that comes with was like doing a trip like this. But once you're there and everything just comes together and then you're just like traipsing around in the forest and it's, it's pretty amazing, I.

00;04;27;26 - 00;04;41;04
Sarah Smith
Guess, for maybe people that listen to this and don't know how it all works. Can you talk a little bit about sort of like the ecosystem and how salmon make their way upstream and what that all kind of. Totally. Can you describe that?

00;04;41;04 - 00;05;02;11
Anne Polyakov
Yeah. What is it all about? So Pacific salmon there. So they're born in freshwater streams and then they make their way out into the ocean and they stay in the ocean for about 2 to 7 years. And then they come back to the place where they were born and they mate and then they die, which is a really crazy life cycle if you think about it.

00;05;02;11 - 00;05;28;23
Anne Polyakov
And you know, there's millions of salmon that do that. So when they return to their freshwater streams, that's a huge influx of nutrients. That is basically returned back to to these terrestrial systems. And a lot of scientists are interested in the impact of this transfer of resources from the ocean to to land and what impact that has on on these communities.

00;05;28;23 - 00;05;51;27
Anne Polyakov
And I should mention that the reason another reason why these systems are so cool is because you can trace nutrients from salmon, and that's something you can't do with other like animals that die and decompose. And that's because when the salmon go to the ocean, they pick up this different form of nitrogen they're that stored in their tissue simply because they're in the marine environment.

00;05;52;15 - 00;06;17;10
Anne Polyakov
And then when they return there, that nitrogen has a different signature than the nitrogen in the terrestrial systems. So basically they have the signature they pick up in the ocean, they bring back. And once they decompose, you can trace you can literally trace that nitrogen through as it sort of moves through the system like as it moves through the soil and as it's uptake in by plants, hopefully by fungi as well.

00;06;18;03 - 00;06;37;25
Sarah Smith
The Quantitative ecology and Resource management program is a unique interdisciplinary graduate program designed for students interested in applying quantitative tools to ecological and resource management issues. Students receive intensive training in the application of statistical, mathematical and decision sciences.

00;06;38;01 - 00;06;59;06
Anne Polyakov
So I come from a quantitative background. My original background is in physics, and I just always wanted to do something more tangible that had more application and sort of connection to the real world and to the natural world. And I always like separated the two, like I'd always be hiking and like doing things outside and then like going to like a lab and doing really abstract physics work.

00;06;59;06 - 00;07;26;03
Anne Polyakov
And finally I'm like, Wait, I can do both the same time. And so I literally Googled Quantitative Ecology program, and this is the first program that came up. And then I looked into it and it was fantastic. A lot of more quantitative research sort of, to be honest, like plugging in numbers into a model and having it predict a certain relationship or a lot of it is also working with big data, right?

00;07;26;03 - 00;07;51;16
Anne Polyakov
Like when you're collecting data within a certain environment for years or you have like thousands of data entries or like 20 variables and there's just no way you can qualitatively make some kind of assessment of that. You can get a really deep understanding of the patterns in, in how a system works, because the the model sort of runs them for you in a way that there's no way you can pick out individual patterns by yourself.

00;07;51;21 - 00;08;10;22
Anne Polyakov
So it's not just these models don't just give you an understanding of the relationship as it currently is. You know, once you have a model that describes a relationship between two variables, you can then plug in other variables in the model, predict what that will show you in terms of the relationship. So it gives you an opportunity to to predict into the future.

00;08;11;11 - 00;08;21;20
Sarah Smith
And to create an impact with their work. To help us better understand the mysterious fungal networks along Alaskan salmon streams and shed more light on ecosystem dynamics.

00;08;22;22 - 00;08;45;04
Anne Polyakov
On my big project right now is analyzing the genetics data. So I'm looking at fungal community composition and whether or not that there's a unique effect of salmon nutrients on the fungi. So are there fungi uniquely adapted to like eat salmon carcasses, basically? So the genetics data will basically help me parse that out. And what are those fungi like?

00;08;45;04 - 00;09;05;16
Anne Polyakov
Have we ever heard of them before? And then I have this my other chapter is I'm going to be tracing the salmon nitrogen through the soil, the fungi and the plants. So I got this data back, isotopic data that will help me be able to actually trace the salmon nitrogen. Where is it going? Like, are the fungi up taking the salmon nitrogen?

00;09;05;21 - 00;09;39;26
Anne Polyakov
Are they taking it in like significant quantities or just like a little bit? And are the mycorrhizal fungi, which are the fungi that partner with plants, are the fungi passing the salmon nitrogen to their plant partners? To some degree it's still an open question were whether specifically salmon nitrogen has some unique benefits. So that's one of my like pretty questions is whether or not salmon nitrogen specifically can alter fungal communities or if there are fungi that are specifically adapted to consume salmon carcasses.

00;09;40;09 - 00;10;02;24
Anne Polyakov
Because if you think about it, these systems have existed for millennia, right? So everything that's in these systems have adapted to these systems. So I think it's not crazy to think that there's these fungi that have eaten these salmon carcasses for millions of years, and they're probably adapted some way to the specific salmon, nitrogen and other nutrients found in these fish.

00;10;04;08 - 00;10;40;22
Sarah Smith
Salmon carcass eating fungi. Yep, you heard that right. They're not plants. They don't produce their own food through photosynthesis. Fungi are important decomposers, especially in the forest. They also create vital nutrients that help an ecosystems primary producers to flourish once to know another fun fact. It's complicated to explain and probably a great topic for another episode, but there's enough evidence to suggest that a mushroom has more in common with you and I than a plant in the forest.

00;10;42;14 - 00;10;57;13
Sarah Smith
I don't. I don't think people like the General public necessarily understands, like what complex organisms these are and kind of how they operate. And science doesn't sound like it knows a ton either about how they. So can you.

00;10;58;11 - 00;10;59;24
Anne Polyakov
Describe a fungi?

00;10;59;26 - 00;11;03;22
Sarah Smith
Yeah, like unpack that a little bit. Like how does a fungus eat.

00;11;04;05 - 00;11;04;20
Anne Polyakov
You know?

00;11;04;20 - 00;11;07;28
Sarah Smith
Yeah, a dead salmon. Like, what is that? What? Yeah.

00;11;08;15 - 00;11;28;18
Anne Polyakov
It's so crazy. Like, because when you I've been thinking about fungi a lot and they're so different, so I'm like, trying to think like a fungi, but there's just no way because they're so different. It's an entire kingdom, right? Like, there's, like, plants and animals. And I don't think like I've talked to people were like fungi are sort of like in the plant kingdom or I'm like, No, this is separate kingdom.

00;11;28;18 - 00;11;44;18
Anne Polyakov
It's like there are their own things. I think a lot of people know fungi as mushrooms, which are the fruiting bodies. So if you think of an apple to an apple tree, that's like the mushroom to the fungi, but the main body of the fungi is belowground and the fungal individuals connect to each other to form these networks.

00;11;44;29 - 00;12;19;26
Anne Polyakov
There's also specific types of fungi that partner with plants, and so those also connect to the network. And that's the general idea, is that there's potentially some redistribution. We don't know how it works. They're essentially these like thick mats of white strands that make up an individual and they're belowground searching for food. And so, you know, if a fungi like stumbles across a patch of nitrogen, let's say it'll surrounded and it actually digests like outside of its body unlike us.

00;12;19;26 - 00;12;39;19
Anne Polyakov
Right? We digest internally a digest outside of its body. So it just sucks up the nitrogen. It can also change the form of the nitrogen so it can better consume it. And I should mention that because that's one of the most important roles that fungi perform in ecosystems is yeah, without fungi, a lot of the stuff that like dies and accumulates everywhere just wouldn't decompose.

00;12;39;19 - 00;12;57;05
Anne Polyakov
So so essentially, like their main role in ecosystems is decomposing organic material into inorganic forms, which they can then eat and like plants can eat and all the other things can eat because it's you can't like get the like nitrogen out of organic material, right? You have to like, decompose it first and then you can pull it out.

00;12;57;17 - 00;13;01;14
Anne Polyakov
So they're the major decomposers of of our world.

00;13;03;20 - 00;13;21;18
Sarah Smith
So to echo what Ann said, the little mushrooms that pop up in our gardens are salads, your brother's blacklight posters. Those are just the reproductive parts that disperse the spores of a much larger, more complex organism networked beneath the ground surface.

00;13;23;22 - 00;13;55;14
Anne Polyakov
I always think of them as, like, kind of say, like chemistry masters, like they're masters of chemistry, basically, like they've had millions of years to evolve this like chemical language and chemical ways to decompose. And like, basically suck food added out of this organic material. So they're pretty good at what they do. And there's there's such a diversity of ways in which they can decompose organic material in the way that they work.

00;13;55;14 - 00;14;07;16
Anne Polyakov
And we've barely scratched the surface of who these things are and like what they do even I don't think we have the tools to really understand them yet.

00;14;08;05 - 00;14;17;22
Sarah Smith
Quantitative science training is unique and intensive. So how did grad students and Ph.D. candidates like and make it all work? You know.

00;14;18;05 - 00;14;31;01
Anne Polyakov
Plan a study, collect the data, get grant funding, work while you're doing your other work so that you still get an income, like write, publish and communicate. It's it's it's really cool to do all of it, but it's hard.

00;14;31;01 - 00;14;32;12
Sarah Smith
So don't forget sleep.

00;14;32;28 - 00;14;33;29
Anne Polyakov
Right? Those things.

00;14;33;29 - 00;14;35;02
Sarah Smith
What's that all about?

00;14;37;25 - 00;14;42;09
Anne Polyakov
Sleeping is important, actually. That's something my bodies eventually forced me to do.

00;14;42;09 - 00;14;48;07
Sarah Smith
So a fascination and passion for the subject matter. Fungi. In this case, it helps.

00;14;48;20 - 00;14;58;21
Anne Polyakov
There are so many kinds that like there's some of them, but some of them are so tiny. Like if you're not looking, you never see any of these little cute, tiny species I'm really obsessed with know.

00;14;59;04 - 00;15;00;06
Sarah Smith
What's your favorite kind?

00;15;01;03 - 00;15;23;21
Anne Polyakov
I'm really into Maecenas, which are these extremely tiny mushrooms that just look really standard. Once you get an up close, they have this like, perfect little dome cap and they're just they come in all sorts of different colors to just crazy colors like blues and pinks and greens. Like it's all because of the red chemistry, right? They're doing different things.

00;15;23;21 - 00;15;50;26
Anne Polyakov
There are different colored or like it depends on the soil environment. So that's another thing. We've only identified approximately 4 to 8% of all the fungal species out there. So when you're out and about in the forest and you see a mushroom, especially if it's not like a super visible one, it's very likely an unidentified species that no one's ever described or like researched or like ever thought about, probably through amazing.

00;15;51;04 - 00;16;06;07
Anne Polyakov
They're so crazy. Like, they almost seem out of this world, but they're not. They just come in such different forms. It's ridiculous. Like there is a poly pores, which are those giant like conk ones on the trees and there's just like goof on. It's just goo. And then there's like your cute little, like mushrooms, like, you know, the standard ones.

00;16;06;07 - 00;16;28;09
Anne Polyakov
So I don't know, I guess I just want everyone to think about fungi more just now. If you're out in the woods hiking or if you're just in any natural environment, there's fungi everywhere and they're doing all these crazy things. We just we can't sense it and we don't really understand it, but it's there. And I feel like once you start thinking about them, you start seeing all the mushrooms everywhere.

00;16;28;16 - 00;16;40;05
Anne Polyakov
You start sort of sensing the world a little differently. I just want to encourage people to expand their their fungal awareness. We need like millions of lifetimes. Everyone just needs to study fungi.

00;16;41;14 - 00;16;41;18
Speaker 3
A special thanks

00;16;44;21 - 00;17;14;02
Sarah Smith
to our guest Anne Polyakov. To learn more about Anne’s work the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management Program, and the University of Washington College of the Environment. You can click the links in this episode description or visit environment.UW.edu from all of us at FieldSound. Thanks for listening.