Biosystematics and Collections

Our group is responsible for two major collections, the Plant Herbarium and the Fungal Collection (Z+ZT), which are jointly managed with the University of Zurich. The purpose of  collections are documenting biodiversity of organisms and making it available for investigations. Currently, our research is focused on rust fungi in tropical regions and in Switzerland, and on endemic Brassicaceae (e.g. Murbeckiella).

In addition, we study the diversity and evolutionary ecology of fungal grass endophytes. A current project deals with the molecular basis of host specificity within complexes of closely related species.