My name is Catalina Montoya Molina, and I am a recent Biology graduate from the University of Antioquia. I was born in Medellín, a city in the department of Antioquia, Colombia. What made me love biology at first was the fact that I lived in a house in the field, so during all my…
I have always been a friend to the small and unappreciated. My mother likes to tell stories of how when I was a kid, we’d go into a toy store for some special occasion, where she would tell my brother and I we could each pick one toy. My brother would take his time, weighing…
My name is Juçara Bordin. I was born in 1978 in Caxias do Sul, in the south of Brazil. Since I was a child I was always in touch with nature because I helped my parents with some work on the farm. My brother and I liked to walk in the woods, find pine nuts…
I hold a MSc degree in Animal Ecology from Marburg University, Germany from 2009. You may wonder why I am now writing for this project organised by the IBA. Well, my passion for the inconspicuous yet beautiful and important plants developed shortly after this…in Wales! I moved here, to Bangor, to start my PhD entitled…
I grew up in the lush green hills of Tennessee but wasn’t interested in plants until I moved to the temperate rainforests of Western Oregon where plants quickly consumed me. Ironically, I still didn’t notice the lush mosses within these forests until after moving to Portland, OR to start college. I was extremely fortunate that…
I was born in Graz, Austria, where I also graduated with a diploma in plant sciences at the Karl-Franzens-University. For three years I’ve been curating the bryophyte collection of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz (GJO). In addition to my primary job, I’m also working on my doctoral thesis focusing on the morphology and genetics of…
I am an assistant professor in the department of biology at Université de Moncton in New Brunswick (Canada) since 2021. The research conducted in my lab focuses on the ecology of bryophytes and understory plants in the boreal forest, from its southern edge with the temperate forest to its northern edge. We study plant community…
I was born in Bizana, a small rural town of Eastern Cape province, South Africa. I started working on bryophytes in 2005 as an intern under the mentorship and leadership of Dr Jacques van Rooy (South African National Biodiversity Institute) until I was a full scientist. He allowed me to take off right away by…
The information here is borrowed heavily from ABN newsletter no. 49 where a testimony was prepared for Helen’s 75th year. Helen has been described as a bryologist who has witnessed the development and expansion in the latter 20th century of bryology in Australia and has herself contributed significantly and continues to do so. Helen completed…
From the Guatemalan cloud forest to the Hawaiian rain forest, my professional journey as a bryologist has been an interesting one. My research interest was not always bryophytes, I started as an ethnobotanist in the coasts and highlands of my beautiful homeland, Guatemala. I was granted a Fulbright scholarship, that allowed me to complete a…