Principal Investigator
Dr. Liza S. ComitaLiza is a Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology in the School of the Environment at Yale University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. She is also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and co-director of the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Master's degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Plant Biology from the University of Georgia. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Minnesota, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). As a plant community ecologist, Liza is interested in ecological mechanisms driving patterns of diversity, dynamics, and species distributions in both pristine and human-altered tropical forests.
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Graduate Students
Harikrishnan Venugopalan Nair Radhamoni
Megan Sullivan
Akshay Surendra
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Alma Trujillo Miranda
Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr. Luke Browne
Dr. Michelle Spicer
Dr. Nohemi Huanca Nunez
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Dr. Anita Weissflog
Anita investigates how insect herbivores and fungal pathogens affect seedling dynamics during the natural regeneration of tropical rainforests. Anita has joined the Comita lab as a postdoctoral researcher in fall 2022 after obtaining her PhD at Bangor University, UK. Using a combination of laboratory and field studies in Panama, Anita hopes to advance our understanding of how species interactions contribute to shaping patterns of biodiversity and driving ecosystem recovery. Read more about Anita here
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Lab Alums
Former PhD Students
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Former Postdocs |