Lab updates October 2025
Aimée received a PhD Fellowship for Fundamental research of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). This is a Meise-FWO Fellowship, which means that Aimée will divide her time between Ghent University and Meise Botanic Garden, where co-supervisor Dr. André De Kesel is located. Congratulations, Aimée!!
Libelje’s checklist of fungi from Honduras was accepted for publication in MycoKeys. Reviews were extremely positive, one of them writing: “The manuscript is amazingly well prepared and I have no critical comments on it, not even typographical errors.” Things are suddenly moving fast in Central American mycology, and so this is now the fifth fungal checklist for that area of the world.
These past few weeks I traveled quite a lot. I was in Thessaloniki, Greece to attend a round-table discussion on science communication (during the 2025 MikroBioKosmos & CEESME meeting); in Białowieża, Poland to teach during the summer school “From Fungal Morphology to Genotype“; in Drøbak, Norway to teach during the Artsdatabanken-funded “iNoLa” workshop on Laboulbeniales fungi; and in České Budějovice, Czechia for meetings with students and collagues. During my time in Thessaloniki, I met Dr. Mary E. Allen from Hartwick College in New York. She studies biofilms and it is because of her that my own interest in the biofilms of Laboulbeniales revived (see this paper)—and so in Spring 2026, my bachelor student Fatima El Madani will do some research on this topic toward a bachelor thesis.
Frederik De Wint spent the past few days finalizing his PhD dissertation. He submitted it this past night and is now enjoying some time off in Portugal.
I organized a potluck for my students in Belgium. As always, a nice gathering of people. I love to see how the group is constantly evolving.
And, while writing these October updates, our manuscript on mycological societies was accepted for publication in Biodiversity and Conservation. One of the first outputs from the Biodiversa+-funded FunDive project, with 44 co-authors! Very proud of this one
