Using mushrooms to treat invasive honeysuckle plants
Biology student hopes turkey tail mushrooms can offer eco-friendly treatment
By Sarah Shoaf, Staff Writer
Inspired by his father, a mushroom farmer, Governors State University (GovState) Biology student Dylan Bales is exploring how mushrooms could help control invasive honeysuckle plants.
“He [dad] and I were talking one day, and he said that he had seen turkey tail infecting honeysuckle before,” said Dylan, who’s currently in his junior year at GovState.
With encouragement from Dr. Xiaoyong Chen, a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, Dylan crafted an experiment that would examine how turkey tail mushroom substrate interacts with invasive honeysuckle. This type of plant, the bush honeysuckle, are upright woody shrubs that grow shiny red berries in the fall.
“My hypothesis is that the turkey tail will act as an herbicide for the plant, preventing it from growing again after being cut, and could spread to nearby honeysuckle plants, infecting them as well,” said Dylan. “Since turkey tail is a local fungus, and is safe to humans, it could be a benign and effective alternative to traditional glyphosate spray and cut methods of removing honeysuckle.”
His hypothesis determined and in need of support for his research, Dylan applied and was accepted to the Illinois Consortium of Life and Environmental Sciences (ICLES), an alliance of institutions of higher education centered on fostering student research experiences and professional development opportunities. Funded by the Walder Foundation, ICLES offers paid research experiences and professional development opportunities to students from partnering organizations.
As a student of the ICLES Consortium, Dylan can conduct his research as well as access professional development webinars, present research at the ICLES annual conference, and engage in summer internships.
When it comes to his experiment, Dylan emphasized the impact that invasive species have on their surroundings. He added that honeysuckle robs nutrients from local plants and can starve local animals, who eat the low nutrient berries that honeysuckle produces. Combining the minimal nutritional value of the berries and the time it takes to find them, animals can quickly become exhausted.
Dylan hopes to find a solution to curbing the spread of the invasive plant, one that doesn’t come at the cost of the surrounding ecosystem.
“The current methods of spraying glyphosate-based herbicides comes with the risks of its toxicity to local plants, humans, and animals,” said Dylan. “It’s my hope that this will result in a cheap, eco-friendly solution to this issue.”
With the cooler weather sweeping in, prime time for turkey tail growth, Dylan plans to start his field research on GovState’s campus at the Biological Field Station this fall.
Interested in learning more about and applying to the Biology program at Governors State University? Click here.