It wasn’t until Dustin Lower returned to college after more than a fifteen-year break that he finally found his niche, and a long sought-after green thumb. 

Lower, who just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in plant biology, is continuing straight on into a Ph.D. through the soils and biogeochemistry program. He plans to continue the research he began as an undergraduate—investigating how soil fungi help forests recover after wildfires—and was recently awarded a fellowship from the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) to support his studies.

Though he didn’t initially plan on a Ph.D., Lower says his time at the University of California, Davis has given him the research experience to realize that this is something he wants, and the confidence that he can do it. 

“I’ve had a very rewarding experience here,” Lower said. “I was fortunate enough to find a lab that was 100% perfect for what I wanted to do, and my adviser, Laura Bogar, is phenomenal—she’s really empowered me to find a research topic that means a lot to me, and cultivated the confidence to go for a Ph.D.”

Fungi and forest recovery 

When he arrived at Davis in 2022 as a community college transfer student, Lower knew he wanted to study mycorrhizal fungi—the underground fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants. Serendipitously, Lower’s eventual advisor, Bogar, who studies just that, joined the Department of Plant Biology at around the same time.

Seeing Lower’s enthusiasm for mycology research, Bogar encouraged him to conduct an independent research project. 

“A year after I returned to school, there was a big wildfire that blew through that whole area and destroyed everything—the whole ranch was gone, everything that my family owned, family heirlooms—all that stuff was just laid to waste, and I saw the impact that had not only on my family but also the community,” Lower said. “So, when my adviser offered me the chance to design my own project, I knew I wanted to try to link the mycology research to wildfires.”

Previous research has suggested that mycorrhizal fungi might help forests recover after wildfires, but the details are unclear. Lower wanted to disentangle exactly how and under what circumstances mycorrhizal fungi help seedlings to establish after fire.

With support from the CBS Dean's Circle Summer Undergraduate Research Program, Lower collected soil samples from areas in Sierra Nevada that were exposed to different degrees of fire (both controlled burns and wildfire). Then, he germinated conifer seedlings in the different soil samples under drought and well-hydrated conditions. Six months later, he harvested the seedlings roots to examine their fungal associations. Lower is still conducting lab work to sequence DNA from the fungi, but his initial results suggest that seedlings grown in soil from more severe fire regions have fewer fungal associations, and seedlings with more fungal associations are better able to handle drought conditions.

“Dustin has been an amazing researcher to have in the lab. I feel incredibly lucky that he joined my group as an undergraduate!” said Bogar. “His independence, drive, and innovative problem solving have set him up with an incredible independent project which I strongly suspect will become a peer reviewed scientific publication in the next few months. I’m so excited that he’ll be starting his Ph.D. here next year!” 

Ultimately, Lower hopes his research will help design better forest recovery programs. He sees the research he has conducted as an undergraduate as a pilot study for his Ph.D.

“Not a lot is known about how fungal communities and seedlings interact after fires, so this preliminary data will help us gauge what the next steps are,” he said. “Through my Ph.D., I’d like to come up with better forest restoration techniques, because right now it's kind of a hurry up and wait situation where you just let the ecosystem do what it does, and it takes years if not decades for these forests to re-grow, and these natural landscapes are very important to the people who live in those areas. It's hard enough going through wildfires as it is, but then this beautiful landscape that you chose to live amongst is gone, and that can make it a lot more difficult to deal with the tragedy of losing everything.” 

Seeding (and growing) a love for nature 

Lower grew up in Alaska where he and his whole family spent a lot of time outdoors, enjoying nature and gardening, though Lower says he didn’t have much of a green thumb himself.

“My family's always been really into plants and gardening, so I had a lot of exposure early on to being outside, identifying mushrooms and working with plants,” said Lower “But ironically, as great as my family is with plants, I've always been terrible at growing them, so I never really thought that plant biology was something that I could do.”

Initially, Lower entered college straight out of high school to study psychology and then mechanical engineering, but dropped out when he realized that neither field was his niche. His interest in college was re-sparked almost fifteen years later, when he was caring for his father, who is a disabled veteran, on a ranch in Sierra Nevada.

“I was spending a lot of time in the forest looking at plants and mushrooms while I was taking care of my father, and it just kind of occurred to me that I love plants and I’m fascinated by fungi,” said Lower. “So, when my father fortunately no longer needed my help, I decided, I'm going back to school.”

A smooth re-entry thanks to AvenueB

Beginning at UC Davis as a re-entry student, Lower was a little nervous about fitting in. To smooth the transition, he enrolled in AvenueB, a scholarship program through the College of Biological Sciences that supports community college transfer students.

“I was kind of nervous, because most of my cohort was literally half my age, and I thought these young kids aren’t going to take to me, but I couldn't have been more wrong,” said Lower “I've made 30 amazing friends through the program, and the program itself has been instrumental in everything that I've accomplished here. It's been the best experience that I've had at UC Davis, and all that comes from the College of Biological Sciences.”