Dr Sally Fryar - Marine and Aquatic Fungi

Dr Sally's main research interests are in the ecology, evolution and systematics of microfungi. She completed her PhD at Flinders University in 1997 on the taxonomy and ecology of wood decay fungi, examining indirect effects of multispecies interactions. In 1998 she moved to Hong Kong as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong where she was introduced to the fascinating world of freshwater and marine fungi under the supervision of Professor Kevin Hyde. Her research took her to various peat swamp forests, mangroves and streams in Borneo where she was a visiting fellow at the University Brunei Darussalam. While studying the competition between microfungi on wood in aquatic ecosystems as well as their succession and natural distribution she also discovered new taxa of microfungi. Her 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.