Professor David Mann, Research Associate
I study and research diatoms, from fundamental questions on the nature of species, through to practical applications such as water quality monitoring.
I became interested in cryptogams at school, during fungus forays in Essex woodlands. I swopped to algae at university and, during my 50-year research career in Bristol and Edinburgh Universities and the Botanics, I have focused mainly on diatoms, a group of microscopic algae that produce elaborate silica shells and perform about 20% of photosynthesis on Earth (every fifth breath you take…). I now work full-time between the Royal Botanic Garden and the Institute for Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Catalonia, supported by my RBGE pension! A major focus currently is the use of metabarcoding (high-throughput sequencing of community or environmental DNA) to document the diversity and distributions of aquatic microalgae as their habitats change rapidly because of climate and other environmental change.
Information on my publications and achievements is available via ORCID (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0522-6802) and other materials at https://websites.rbge.org.uk/algae/index.html