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Valérie Reeb
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Biology
Duke University
vreeb@duke.edu
Education:
1993 M.S. Botany, University of Orléans, France.
1991 DEUG Biology, University of Strasbourg, France.
Research Interests:
Systematic and phylogeny of the lichen-forming fungi family Acarosporaceae and genus Acarospora.
Current Research:
The family Acarosporaceae and genus Acarospora have putative ancestral character states suggesting a basal position within the lichenized ascomycetes. Therefore, this family could play an important role in our understanding of the evolution and diversification of lichens. However, the circumscription of the family (never included in any phylogenetic studies), remains unresolved. The Acarosporaceae are small crustose species with cryptic morphological characters difficult to interpret, and the diagnose of the family relies on presence of asci with over 100 spores per ascus, a character probably not restricted to this family.
My current work consists in reconstructing a molecular based phylogeny of the family Acarosporaceae and the genus Acarospora within a broad sampling of lichenized and non-lichenized ascomycetes, in order to circumscribe the family and genus and determine the phylogenetic position of the family within the ascomycetes. A robust phylogenetic study would also help to provide a structure upon which lichenologists could build a stable and evolutionary meaningful classification for the genus Acarospora and the family Acarosporaceae.
Publications:
Lutzoni, F., Kauff, F., Cox, C., McLaughlin, D., Celio, G., Dentinger, B., Padamsee, M., Baloch, E., Grube, M., Hibbett, D., Spatafora, J., Lücking, R., Hofstetter, V., Reeb, V., Binder, M., Shcoch, C., Schmitt, I., Lumbsch, T., James, T., Hosaka, K., Sung, G.-H., Liu, Y., Hall, B., Lim, Y.-W., Matheny, B., Gueidan, C., Ertz, D., Diederich, P., Miadlikowska, J., Arnold, A. E., Vilgalys, R. 2004. Where are we in assembling the fungal tree of life, classifying the fungi, and understanding the evolution of their subcellular traits? American Journal of Botany
Reeb V., Lutzoni F. and Roux C. 2004. Contribution of RPB2 to multilocus phylogenetic studies of the euascomycetes (Pezizomycotina, Fungi) with special emphasis on the lichen-forming Acarosporaceae and evolution of polyspory. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 32(3): 1036-1060.
Haugen, P., Reeb V., Lutzoni F. and Bhattacharya D. 2004. The evolution of homing endonuclease genes and group I introns in nuclear rDNA. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21(1): 129-140.
Lutzoni, F., Pagel, M., Reeb, V. 2001. Major fungal lineages are derived from lichen symbiotic ancestors. Nature 411(June21): 937-940.
Bhattacharya, D., Lutzoni, F., Reeb, V., Simon, D., Nason, J., Fernandez, F. 2000. Widespread occurrence of spliceosomal introns in the rDNA genes of ascomycetes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:1971-1984.
Lutzoni, F., Wagner, P., Reeb V., and Zoller, S. 2000. Integrating ambiguously aligned regions of DNA sequences in phylogenetic analyses without violating positional homology. Systematic Biology 49:628-651.
Bjelland, T., G. Halleraker, V. Reeb and T. Tønsberg. 1997. The chemotypes of Cetrelia olivetorum in Norway. Graphis Scripta 8: 5-7.
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Photo: Jolanta Miadlikowska
Photo: Stephen Sharnoff
Acarospora evoluta
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