What you will learn:
For Ascomycota only a few percent of the existing species are yet known to science. In this thesis you’ll be part of a Biodiversity Mapping Project and contribute to a field within mycology that is in high demand of taxonomic and phylogenetic expertise. By participating in field surveys you will learn diversity patterns, taxonomy and field identification skills. In the laboratory, you will learn microscope techniques to study the morphology of Ascomycota teleomorphs and anamorphs, ascospore isolation, pure culturing, DNA preparation, multimarker sequencing and bioinformatics. Depending on your interest, you can choose to focus more on aspects of speciation, adaptations, and genomics relating to ’species pairs’ identified during the surveys, or to delve into the field of (alpha)taxonomy with a good chance of taking part as an author of new species names.
What we offer: With working places at both NINA and UiO, you will get experience and contacts within both basic and applied aspects of mycology, and conservation biology. The master is part of the project ‘Surveys of pyrenomycetoid Ascomycota informed by host relations - species new to science of poorly studied families, and new country records’, financed by Artsdatabanken 2021-2024.
Supervisors: The candidate will be supervised by Inger Skrede at UiO, and by Bj?rn Nordén and Mathias Andreasen at NINA.