Activities and Disciplines

Mycology

Current Kew Mycologists

Dr. Brian M. Spooner is Head of Mycology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he has worked as a taxonomic mycologist since his appointment in 1975. His main research interests lie with the discomycetes, but he also undertakes research on other ascomycetous groups, as well as British fungi in general. His work at Kew additionally covers routine identifications and curation of the Ascomycetes Reference Collection. He has written over 200 publications, including a major account of some inoperculate discomycetes from Australasia. Current projects include fungi from the Azores and from Brunei, together with research into the British Ascomycota. He is also on the editorial board and book review editor for the journal, Kew Bulletin.

E-mail: B.Spooner@kew.org

Dr. Peter J. Roberts was appointed to the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1994 and is now a Senior Scientific Officer, working as a taxonomic mycologist. His main interest is in the heterobasidiomycetes, but his work at Kew also covers identification, research, and curation within the corticioid fungi and other non-agaricoid Basidiomycetes. Current and recent projects include morphological and molecular research into rhizoctonia-forming fungi (see Books ), revisions of the genera Stypella and Myxarium, and heterobasidiomycetes and aphyllophoroid fungi from the Azores, Belize, Brunei, Cameroon, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. He is also on the editorial staff of the journals Field Mycology and Persoonia.

E-mail: P.Roberts @kew.org

Dr. Heidi Döring joined the Mycology Section as Scientific Officer and laboratory manager in 2005, having finished her postdoctoral studies at Umeå University in Sweden. Heidi is originally from Germany and studied at Philipps-University Marburg and the University of Bayreuth. Her current interests include the phylogeny of European Exobasidium species (the subject of her PhD thesis) and infraspecific genetic variation and species delimitation in lichenised fungi, particularly the genus Stereocaulon. She has published over 20 papers on Exobasidium species and both lichenised and non-lichenised Ascomycetes. At Kew she will be undertaking molecular studies in a wide range of systematic subjects, as well as looking after our living culture collections.

E-mail: H.Doring@kew.org

Dr. Begoña Aguirre-Hudson joined the Mycology Section in October 2002 for a nine-month project, helping us determine some of our unnamed lichen collections. In September 2003 she took up the post of Assistant Scientific Officer, playing an essential role in laying away new collections and handling specimen loan enquiries received from around the world. Begoña is originally from the Basque Country, but in 1988 gained a PhD from the University of Reading on the genus Leptorhaphis. Since then, she has undertaken research on lichenised ascomycetes at the Natural History Museum and IMI (now CABI Bioscience), has travelled and collected in Thailand, and has published extensively on lichen distribution and taxonomy.

E-mail: B.aguirre-hudson@kew.org

Dr. E. Punithalingam is a Kew Research Associate. He retired from the Mycological Institute of CAB International (IMI), where he was a Principal Mycologist until 1995. He is a world authority on the Coelomycetes and an innovative microscopist. He complements the current staff of the mycology section as an expert on the Deuteromycota.

Dr. Yi-Jian Yao is a Kew Research Associate who first joined Kew as a research student in 1989 and was appointed Leverhulme Research Fellow working on molecular systematics of Tyromyces in 1995. His previous research was on the taxonomy of Endogonales (see Books) and on several ascomycetous families for the British Ascomycete Flora.

Email mycology@kew.org

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