Gerhard Rambold
Gerhard Rambold is a German lichenologist, mycologist and university professor who has led the mycology group at the University of Bayreuth since 1999. He is recognised for creating LIAS, "A Global Information System for Lichenised and Non‑Lichenised Ascomycetes", which integrates morphological, molecular and distributional data into interactive identification tools. Combining extensive field collections with bio‑ and ecoinformatics, his research spans taxonomy, ecology and fungal biodiversity on several continents.
Early life and education
Rambold was born in Pocking, Lower Bavaria in 1956. He grew up in a musically oriented family in southern Germany but gravitated toward biology while studying at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich under the influence of Hannes Hertel. He earned a biology diploma in 1984 with a thesis on rock-dwelling lichens from Iceland, demonstrating an early commitment to meticulous specimen work.Under Hertel's supervision he completed a doctorate in 1989, producing a monograph on Australian saxicolous lecideoid lichens based largely on specimens he gathered during an extensive collecting trip across the continent. His habilitation in systematic botany followed in 1997 at Munich, concentrating on inter‑lecanoralean associations and launching a productive collaboration with his partner Dagmar Triebel.
Career and research
Between 1995 and 1998 Rambold lectured at both the Technical University of Munich and LMU before accepting a full professorship at Bayreuth in 1999, where he founded the modern mycology section. He simultaneously headed the university's Central Laboratory for DNA Analytics and Ecoinformatics until 2015, embedding molecular methods and data management into lichenological training and infrastructure.Rambold's interest in bioinformatics led to LIAS, which links taxonomic concepts, definitions and checklist data with multilingual, web‑based keys and dynamic distribution maps. The system has become a reference model for biodiversity information platforms and underpins numerous identification programmes worldwide.
His laboratory has explored photobiont specificity, soil lichen diversity in southern Africa and the molecular ecology of symbiotic fungi, producing influential studies such as the 1998 Bryologist paper on photobionts as phylogenetic indicators and subsequent surveys of arid‑zone lichen communities. He co‑edited the 2004 Festschrift "Contributions to Lichenology" honouring Hertel and has supervised doctoral candidates including Andreas Beck, Marcelo Cáceres, Gregor Hagedorn, Anna Kehl and Derek Peršoh.
Rambold is a regular speaker at international meetings—such as the 2004 fifth International Association for Lichenology congress in Tartu—and collaborates on projects that standardise fungal trait data for ecological modelling and conservation planning. He is a section editor for the academic journals Mycological Progress and MycoKeys.