Dr Sally Fryar

My main research interests are in the ecology, evolution, systematics, and conservation of aquatic fungi.  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 worked on freshwater and marine fungi. 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. I am passionate about the conservation of fungi and the ecosystems that they inhabit.

For more information see my website or follow me on Bluesky (@sally-mycology.bsky.social)