Dr Daniel Henk

I work on fungal ecology and evolution in Dr. Mat Fisher's lab. As we described in a recent Nature review, fungi are emerging as a surprising threat to biodiversity and human welfare. However, fungi also form the core symbioses that support terrestrial ecosystems. I am particularly interested in using evolutionary biology approaches to understand how some fungi invade new niches, expand geographic distributions, and adapt to heterogeneous environments. Understanding the constraints and mechanisms fungi exploit to escape them will enable us to act to prevent disease emergence and promote rehabilitation efforts where the fungal communities must be resstablished.

This is a short film clip about some of our work on Penicillium diversity.

With support from the CEE I am currently collaborating with researchers from the Natural History Museum and Kew on developing these bioresources for next-gen genomic sequencing analysis.