Dale A. Kruse

Joined: Mar 16, 2016 Last Active: Nov 18, 2021 iNaturalist

Hello i-Naturalist Community!!

My name is Dale Kruse and I am Curator of the S.M.Tracy Herbarium at Texas A&M University in College Station. My passion, borderline obsession, is the bryophytes and lichens, especially those found in Texas. In the broad sense my research interests are concerned with the systematics, ecology, and biogeography of the mosses, liverworts, hornworts (bryophytes) and lichens. I have conducted field work throughout Texas and much of the southeastern United States. I have also been very fortunate to make collections internationally in Scotland, England, and northern Mexico. The focus of my research is to 1) document the distribution of these groups at local, regional, and global scales, 2) explore the influence of substrate variability on bryophyte and lichen distributions both spatially and temporally, and 3) determine the structure and composition of bryophyte and lichen communities in varied ecosystems.

I am currently developing/managing a project on i-Naturalist, "The Texas Bryophyte and Lichen Working Group (TBLWG)". TBLWG is open to anyone interested in any aspect of bryology and/or lichenology - this include amateurs and professionals. If you are interested, please take a look at the project page and join.

Although a few tentative bryophyte and lichen identifications can often be made from a picture (such as on i-Naturalist), most require an actual specimen to arrive at a confident identification (due to the microscopic characters used in identification keys). With this in mind, I am always interested in receiving legally collected, adequately prepared and documented Texas bryophyte and lichen specimens in exchange for identification. However, please contact me BEFORE sending specimens so we can discuss the details.

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