Nauheimer, Lars ( - )

In his own words:

Since I came to Australia in 2015, I have worked in the Australian Tropical Herbarium in Cairns as postdoctoral research fellow. Together with Katharina Nargar and Mark Clements, I apply phylogenetic and phylogenomic methods to unravel the biodiversity of Australasian orchids. My two main projects are focussing on the beautiful and challenging genus Thelymitra and since 2018 the similarly beautiful and not less confusing genus Diuris. Both genera are relatively diverse (with roughly 100 species each) and contain a good number of species with unclear species circumscriptions, i.e. they are difficult to distinguish in the field where you notice the variability in species and the similarity between species.

Before coming to Australia, I had worked on Araceae for my PhD and on Sapindales and Nymphaeales during postdoctoral positions where I focussed on biogeography and molecular dating aspects.

Probably since I started studying biology, my interests have been all over the shop, wherever I looked. But the most fascinating stories I found are the diverse interactions of organisms, their life strategies and the bigger picture that hold everything together. What brought me to systematics was surely the utterly fascinating concept of evolution with all its complexity and implications. When I found out how we are able to build hypotheses of the evolutionary history of organisms just by comparing some of their DNA, I was hooked.

Lars Nauheimer, by himself 2019

Source: Extracted from: Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 178 (March 2019)
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: https://research.jcu.edu.au/portfolio/lars.nauheimer/