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