Hello world! This is Hannes Becher writing. I am a geneticist who is enthusiastic about bryophytes and evolution and you shall soon hear more about these topics! Currently, I am a postdoc in Alex Twyford’s plant evolution and genomics lab at the University of Edinburgh, where I work on eyebrights. These are parasitic flowering plants, which you may also hear about in the future. During my academic life, I have worked on flowering plants and insects (see Publications page). This includes a lot of computational biology and quite a bit of field work, both of which I enjoy very much. I have always liked bryophytes and my previous work has led me to think that bryophytes are the ideal group to work on. I hope that my future posts will make clear why that is so.
Besides telling people who I am, this blog is intended to bring together knowledge on genetics, evolution, and bryophytes. While I hope that people will find these pages useful and interesting, this project is also very much intended to make myself think and learn more about bryophytes! Please, if you have a question about bryophyte genetics, get in touch, and I will do what I can to turn it into an informative blog post. Of course, if you find something on these pages inaccurate or worth explaining then please get in touch too!
There is plenty material on the web on many aspects of bryology. In particular species identification, collecting, species ranges, ecology, taxonomy, morphology, and photography are well covered. I do not think that I could do a better job than the people maintaining those blogs and websites. The areas where I can make contributions are genetics, genomics, and evolution, and this is what I am going to focus on. I hope that there will be somebody who finds this interesting. Happy reading!
Hannes
Bryophyte Evolutionary Genetics 