Studying the processes shaping tropical plant communities
at local, regional, and global scales
photos by Christian Ziegler

Latest news from the lab

September 2024 - We are excited to welcome three new graduate students, María Alejandra, Shuo, and Stanley, to the lab!

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June 2024 - Check out our new paper on within-species variation in drought resistance of tropical trees in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. We combined field experiments at 4 sites, functional traits measurements, and estimates of gene flow to assess responses to water availability in 16 species across a strong rainfall gradient in Panama.  And the results were not what we expected....
February 2024 - New paper out in Nature on Latitudinal patterns in stabilizing density dependence of forest communities, with collaborator Lisa Hülsmann and many others, examining conspecific negative density dependence across 23 ForestGEO plots.
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September 2023 - ~1M observations of ~185,000 individuals of >400 species!! Check out our data paper in Ecology on the Long-term seedling and small sapling census data from the Barro Colorado Island 50 ha Forest Dynamics Plot, Panama. The full data set is openly available as Supporting Information or can be downloaded from Dryad. 

July 2023 - We will be sad to see her go, but are excited for Michelle to start her new faculty position at Lehigh University's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department! Check out her lab website for updates and opportunities.
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May 2023 - Super proud of newly minted PhDs Megan and Hari!
Megan is off to Rwanda on a Fulbright for the next year before starting a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton. Hari is headed to the Smithsonian Institute for a postdoctoral fellowship. Looking forward to seeing all the wonderful things they accomplish in their careers!
May 2023 - Congratulations to Cameron on graduating with his Masters of Forest Science. Read more about Cam's thesis and his contributions to YSE here.
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January 2023 - Hari's first dissertation chapter on Local- and landscape-scale drivers of terrestrial herbaceous plant diversity along a tropical rainfall gradient in Western Ghats, India is now online early in Journal of Ecology. Congrats to Hari on the paper and his successful dissertation defense!
December 2022 - Check out this Yale news story about the recent paper led by former postdoc Sergio Estrada Villegas on animal seed dispersal during secondary succession in forests of Panama. Congrats to Sergio on the paper and his new faculty position at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia!
November 2022 - New paper out in Functional Ecology led by postdoc Luke Browne on functional trait–vital rate relationships in tropical tree seedlings across rainfall and nutrient gradients in Panama.
September 2022 - We are excited to welcome two new postdocs, Dr. Nohemi Huanca Nunez and Dr. Anita Weissflog! Both will be working on secondary forests in Panama, advancing understanding of the processes that drive tropical forest recovery following human disturbance.
March 2022 - Congrats to Megan Sullivan on the publication of her first dissertation chapter: A decade of diversity and forest structure: Post-logging patterns across life stages in an Afrotropical forest.
December 2021 - Things are getting a little less woody in the lab.... New review paper out led by postdoc Michelle Spicer on Herbaceous plant diversity in forest ecosystems: patterns, mechanisms, and threats and our NSF workshop grant on Diversity and dynamics of herbaceous plant communities in forest ecosystems just got  funded!
September 2021 - Welcome to our newest PhD student, Alma Trujillo Miranda. Alma has her Masters degree from Instituto de Ecología A. C. in México, where she conducted research on the effectiveness of active versus passive restoration strategies in tropical montane cloud forest.
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July 2021 - New paper out in Global Change Biology by postdoc Luke Browne looks at the impact of the extreme 2015-16 El Niño-related drought on tree seedling mortality at multiple sites along a rainfall gradient in Panama. Check it out here.
May 2021 - Liza named co-director of the new Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture.
February 2021 - We weren't sure it was going to be possible this year, but thanks to our amazing field team in Panama, we were able do the annual seedling census at our eight long-term sites in central Panama*. Thanks to Lourdes, Roni, Luis, Guillermo, Bianco, and Moises - you are seedling superstars!
  *Under strict covid-19 safety protocols to keep everyone healthy!
September 2020 - New review paper out: Natural Enemies and the Maintenance of Tropical Tree Diversity: Recent Insights and Implications for the Future of Biodiversity in a Changing World
May 2020 - Comita lab postdoc, Dr. Sergio Estrada Villegas, gave a fantastic talk on biodiversity and plant-animal interactions for the virtual public outreach program 'Ask a Yale Environmental Expert'.
May 2020 - Congratulations to graduating PhD students, Dr. Juan Carlos Penagos Zuluaga and Dr. Andrew Muehleisen!  Good luck in your new postdoc positions. We will miss you!
April 2020 - We may all be stuck at home, but that won't stop us from talking about plant-soil feedback in tropical forests. Akshay wins the prize for best virtual background during Zoom lab meetings!
March 2020 - Check out our new paper in Journal of Ecology on long-term changes in the relative abundance of lianas in the seedling layer of the Barro Colorado Island forest in Panama.
January 2020 - Back in Panama to recensus seedlings at sites spanning a rainfall gradient from the Pacific to the Caribbean coast as part of a new NSF CAREER grant. Special thanks to Lourdes, Roni, Luis, Guillermo, Mitzila, Thomas, Luke, and Akshay for the long (but fun) days in the field!

Contact

Yale School of the Environment
195 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511 
USA
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