Elise Lebreton

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Élise is a lichenologist, i.e. a scientist who studies lichens. Lichens are symbiotic organisms made up of two main partners living together: a fungus and an alga, and/or sometimes a cyanobacterium. She discovered tropical lichens during her master’s at the University of Antilles in Guadeloupe (French Caribbean). Seeing the striking diversity of lichens, so different from those she had encountered in France, was a turning point. Recognizing how much remained to be discovered about Caribbean lichen biodiversity, she did everything she could to learn, aiming to become a lichenologist able to identify and describe species still unknown to science. Five years later, she began a PhD at the University of Liège (Belgium), focusing on leaf-dwelling lichens (those that grow on the surface of living leaves of vascular plant), devoting four years to complete her PhD thesis. Her work has taken her back to Guadeloupe and to other tropical regions, where she collected numerous specimens, analyzed their DNA to understand how they evolved and described new species. Today, Élise works as a scientific collaborator at the University of Liège. While foliicolous lichens serve as her model system for fundamental research, she is developing expertise across all lichen groups (those on soil, bark, rock etc). This next expedition in Saba is an opportunity for her to learn, document and share the often-hidden diversity of lichens, contributing to a better understanding of insular tropical ecosystems.

 

ResearchGates: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elise-Lebreton  

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elise-lebreton-a52751171

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Elise will be on Saba from February 26-March 10, 2026. We will be updating our calendar with activity dates and times as we continue to coordinate our event. Stay tuned!

 

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