I am a fungal taxonomist, specialising in the marine and freshwater fungi of Australia. These are mostly ascomycetes and their asexual forms.
I completed my PhD at Flinders University in 1997 on the taxonomy and ecology of wood decay fungi (basidiomycetes), examining indirect effects of multi-species interactions. In 1998 I moved to Hong Kong as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong where I was introduced to the fascinating world of freshwater and marine fungi under the supervision of Professor Kevin Hyde. My research took me to various peat swamp forests, mangroves and streams in Borneo where I was a visiting fellow at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
The challenge with studying marine and freshwater fungi is that species descriptions are scattered throughout the literature, often in obscure, inaccessible journals and with poor illustrations. While taking a career break to have children, I spent 10 years gathering as much literature as possible on marine and freshwater fungi, putting together a database on worldwide records of each species along with their descriptions.
My aim is to provide thorough, consistent, understandable descriptions of marine and freshwater fungi of Australia along with clear illustrations and images so that non-specialists are able to identify these species.
I often find new species and genera and I am in the process of describing and publishing a number of these along with phylogenetic analyses based on molecular data.
I am an adjunct senior lecturer at Flinders University where I do some teaching and molecular work.