Wood-inhabiting polypore fungi are one of the most important groups of organisms as they contribute substantially to carbon and nutrient cycles by decomposing dead wood. Current knowledge of their diversity, ecology and distribution is almost exclusively limited to temperate and boreal forest ecosystems. However, as macroclimate and resource-related variables differ considerably between tropical and temperate or boreal forest ecosystems, wood-inhabiting polypore fungi might differ between these ecosystems from ecological and taxonomical perspectives. During his PhD works, Dr. Boris Armel Olou investigated the effects of macroclimate and deadwood on the diversity of tropical wood-inhabiting fungi. He also worked to reinforce the boundaries within certain genera of polypores in the molecular era by combining an integrative taxonomic approach including ecology, morphology, and molecular phylogeny. Finally, Dr. Boris Armel Olou shed light on the distribution of wood-inhabiting polypore fungi following the North-South latitudinal gradient of Benin, a tropical Africa country.

Since October 2020 I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Parakou. I will continue addressing taxonomic and ecological issues in Tropical African pore fungi by enlarging geographic sampling efforts (sampling in other parts of Africa) but also extending the works to other taxa.

Some indicator species of each macroclimatic zone in Benin and phylogenetic position of Trametes species from Benin (See Olou et al. 2019, 2020)