Land management impacts biodiversity, structure, and ecosystem function
My dissertation research explores the impacts of low-level selective logging in Gabon. I investigated how selective logging - a widespread, but localized disturbance - can alter patterns of tree & liana regeneration, growth, and survival and shift composition, structure, and function of vegetation communities in a tropical rainforest. To do this, I set up a network of vegetation plots that measured seedling, sapling, and adult trees and lianas across a chronosequence of logged forest. Our initial vegetation censuses found that low-intensity selective logging had relatively small effects on understory forest structure and diversity (link).
Environmental variation shapes plant communities
Abiotic variation, from microhabitat to macroecological scales, impacts reproduction success, functional trait variability, and resource availability in plant communities.
Currently, I am exploring how climate change affects tropical reproductive phenology (the timing of flowering and fruiting of tree species), and how shifts in phenological patterns can have cascading impacts in tropical ecosystems, affecting resource availability, impacting animal populations, and creating challenges for management and conservation of tropical forest ecosystems.
Previously, I studied how climate affects plant communities though a few projects that look at trait shifts across climate & elevation gradients. In the Brazillian cerrado, I described how macroecological patterns of leaf trait variation across precipitation and temperature gradients. We explored how drip-tip incidence in Cerrado species is affected by climate and species distribution patterns (link). Additionally, I collected data on herbaceous plant traits across a climate & elevation gradient in the Gongga Mountains, Sichuan, China (link).
Currently, I am exploring how climate change affects tropical reproductive phenology (the timing of flowering and fruiting of tree species), and how shifts in phenological patterns can have cascading impacts in tropical ecosystems, affecting resource availability, impacting animal populations, and creating challenges for management and conservation of tropical forest ecosystems.
Previously, I studied how climate affects plant communities though a few projects that look at trait shifts across climate & elevation gradients. In the Brazillian cerrado, I described how macroecological patterns of leaf trait variation across precipitation and temperature gradients. We explored how drip-tip incidence in Cerrado species is affected by climate and species distribution patterns (link). Additionally, I collected data on herbaceous plant traits across a climate & elevation gradient in the Gongga Mountains, Sichuan, China (link).
Plant-animal interactions and ecological processes
Plant-animal interactions are important ecological processes that shape ecosystems in ways that can impact biodiversity, forest structure, carbon storage, and forest functioning. One of my first research projects explored how the seed fate of a bird- and monkey-dispersed species (Virola surinamensis) impacted reproductive success on BCI in Panama (link). Additionally, I have collaborated on research investigating how the impacts of megaherbivores, such as elephants, can affect the structure and diversity of understory plants around elephant-dispersed tree species in Congo Basin forests (link).
