我要吃瓜

I am passionate about fungal ecology from the arctic to the tropics. I completed my PhD in Biology at the Dept. of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. My thesis focused on elucidating ecto- and ericoid mycorrhizal effects on carbon dynamics in boreal forest soils by measuring mycelial production, decomposition and respiration. I also worked on an applied project evaluating the effectiveness of established forest conservation methods to detect the richness and diversity of soil fungi using DNA metabarcoding.

At Stirling, my work encompasses the MYCONET project, which aims to understand how the highly organic soils in alpine ecosystems will respond to increased abundance of trees and woody shrubs and their mycorrhizal symbionts by examining processes in the ‘mycorrhizosphere’ using culture based methods, radiocarbon analyses, statistical modelling, metagenomics and intensive field campaigns. These processes may be important determinants for the balance of globally important soil carbon stores. This project is in cooperation with the University of Edinburgh, The James Hutton Institute and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

I am the Scottish node representative for the pan-European Fungal Diversity project () where we are making DNA barcoding more accessible for community mycologists - please get in touch if you have specific target species of interest to sequence. Additionally, I have been awarded a small grant from the Mycological Society of America to study mycorrhizal fungi in Andean cloud forests in collaboration with UNSAAC in Cusco, Perú.

Fungi, Mycorrhizas, Soil Biology, Conservation Biology, Ecosystem Ecology