Main areas of research

  • Ecology, biodiversity, distribution, taxonomy, fungi/algae/bacteria associations and conservation of lichens and biological soil crusts in Austria, Antarctica, subantarctic areas in South America and Arctic areas.
  • Investigations on symbiotic interactions in lichens, especially the specific diversity of mycobionts and photobionts correlated to climate data using molecular, chemical  and morphological tools.
  • Modelling of present-day climate-related preferences of photobionts, mycobionts and  their symbiosis.
  • Conservation: Red list species of lichens in endangered habitats in Austria.
  • Diversity of photobionts in soil crust-forming lichens.

All studies are carried out in the Department of Environment & Biodiversity/AG Comes

Technical and professional qualifications

  • Bioinformatics: phylogenetic, biogeographic and statistical methods (network statistics and niche modelling)
  • NGS, PCR- techniques,  molecular cloning (single genes), Primer-design
  • Taxonomy: Microscopy, staining techniques, cross sectioning on kryomicrotome, culturing