Dr Sally Fryar

My main research interests are in the ecology, evolution and systematics of microfungi. I completed my PhD at Flinders University in 1997 on the taxonomy and ecology of wood decay fungi, examining indirect effects of multispecies 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. While studying the competition between microfungi on wood in aquatic ecosystems as well as their succession and natural distribution I also discovered new taxa of microfungi. My research now involves collecting microfungi from marine and freshwater habitats around Australia. This includes the identification of ascomycetes and their asexual forms (hyphomycetes and coelomycetes), culturing microfungi, experimental design and statistics, DNA extraction of fungi, PCR for DNA sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis.