Gerhard Walter Rambold (born 1956) is a German mycologist and lichenologist whose research covers the ecological, morphological, and taxonomic roles of fungal communities, particularly focusing on lichenized and non-lichenized fungi.
Rambold began his academic career as a research associate at the Botanische Staatssammlung München from 1984 to 1989, and continued in this role while working at LMU Munich from 1990 to 1995.
[13] From 1982 to 2006, he primarily gathered both lichenized and non-lichenized, including extremophilic ascomycetes in regions such as Central Europe, the Canary Islands, Australia, Southern Africa, and the United States (specifically Arizona).
[14] Building on his early taxonomic work, Rambold expanded his studies to fungal communities or mycobiomes, exploring fungi associated with plants, invertebrates, soil, and microplastics.
[20] With his collaborators, he showed how polymer properties of microplastics shape microbial community assembly and succession, offering insights into how environmental pollutants influence ecosystem dynamics.
[22] He was involved in a collaborative project that led to the launch of DiversityNaviKey (DNK), a diagnostic tool for biology and related sciences built on the Diversity Workbench database, enabling interactive identification of organisms and other research entities based on predefined properties.