Submitted by editor on 14 August 2025.

We are happy to welcome Dr. Melánie Roy, from Toulouse, France, to the Oikos Editorial Board. To know more about her, read our interview below!

Website: https://www.cima.fcen.uba.ar/~melanie.roy/cv_melanie.roy_english.pdf

What's your main research focus at the moment?

I'm studying fungal diversity, its sensibility to global change, but also its contribution to ecosystem resilience. I have built my expertise on forest ecosystems where ectomycorrhizal fungi form key symbioses with tree roots, especially in boreal forests, in temperate forests and in some peculiar neotropical ones. I've recently started to question the role of fungal diversity at the landscape level, to integrate both fungal diversity in forest ecosystems but also their dispersal in surrounding habitats, such as agrosystems.

Can you describe your research career? Where, what, when?

Oh! a travelling story! I've started as a molecular biologists at ENS Lyon in France, but willing to work on forest ecosystems since my childhood in Canada. My PhD in ecology and evolution was already on symbioses and I kept working on fungi since, exploring their diversity in unique forest ecosystems worldwide. I've been teaching ecology and evolution of fungal symbioses in Toulouse University since 2010. In 2014, I spent a short-term research sabbatical in French Guiana for the CNRS, opening my career to the use of eDNA metabarcoding to study fungi. In 2021, I started my actual position at the International Research Lab on the study of Climate and its impacts in Argentina, involving the French CNRS and IRD, ti study not only fungal diversity in South America but also their link with climate resilience. Since 2017, I'm also adjunct professor at the University of Quebec in Abitibi Temiscamingue (Canada), in the middle of a major biodiversity hotspot for ectomycorrhizal fungi.

How come that you became a scientist in ecology?

Through my interest for forests, botany, mycology, I've met great and inspiring colleagues - decided to follow this path but also to transmit by teaching, communicating on science, and drawing to share the links we build with our landscapes and biodiversity. My training in molecular biology makes sense today, through the use of eDNA, and I'm glad to show that a travelling career, shifts between disciplines, can lead to an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science. I must recognize the field is central in my passion for science, and organizing and handling field campaign, in Canada, Argentina, in sub-antarctic or tropical forests is always a great human and scientific adventure. Finally, training but also inspiring students is part of my motivation for science, and I'm glad to contribute to share knowledge and know-how on mycology in France and abroad, to promising young scientists.

What do you do when you're not working?

Drawing, and walking with friends outside! I'm still curious about simple things, observing plants, discovering geological landscape in Argentina, tasting wine and their terroir, learning new languages, and I love sharing these experiences with a few sketches and colors. Here is a drawing made in São Paulo - visiting Paulo's Guimaraes team for example!

Categories: 

General

Comments