Daniel Croll

Daniel completed his PhD in our group in 2009. He is now a postdoc at the ETH Zürich in the group of Prof. Bruce McDonald. He can be contacted via the website:
http://www.path.ethz.ch/people/members/current_members/dcroll/index

My research topic concerns an ecologically very important group of plant symbionts, the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These soil fungi form an ancient clade and were likely present during the initial colonisation of land by plants. Reproduction of AMF is thought to be purely asexual and involves spore formation from mature mycelium.

During my master thesis, I studied the effects of different environmental conditions on a population of AMF in a model system. Different individuals were tested whether phenotypic and/or genotypic differentiation would occur depending on the environment.

My PhD project will focus on the genetic basis of anastomoses (hyphal fusions) at the intra- and inter-individual levels.

Born on May 18th, 1978 in Liesberg, Switzerland

2004 -
PhD studies on the genetic basis of anastomoses in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, supervised by Prof. Ian R. Sanders, University of Lausanne.

2003
Research assistant at the Department of Ecology & Evolution, University of Lausanne, supervised by Prof. J. Goudet, University of Lausanne. Research project: developing sequence-based genetic markers on the chloroplast for the study of fine-scale population structure in S. vulgaris, a gynodioecious plant species.

2002 - 2003
Master thesis on "genotype-by-environment interactions and selection in an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal population", supervised by Prof. Ian R. Sanders, University of Lausanne.

1998 - 2002
Studies in Biology (specialisations in Plant Biochemistry & Biotechnology, Ecology, Evolution & Population Genetics). University of Lausanne.