Contact Information
505 S. Goodwin Ave
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Areas
Research Description
Tropical forest dynamics, plant-soil and plant-fungal interactions, seed ecology
My research concerns the population and community ecology of tropical forests, with a particular interest in understanding how soil nutrient availability and soil microbial communities shape the composition and diversity of tree communities. Much of my work is carried out with collaborators at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where I am a Research Associate Scientist. My work is carried out principally on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Watershed, or at the Fortuna Forest Reserve and Volcan Barú in western Panama where I established and maintain a network of forest dynamics plots that encompass a wide range of soil nutrient availabilities and elevation (700-3200m).
Current projects explore:
- seed-infecting fungi as a model system for understanding how plant-pathogen interactions and plant defense traits influence abundance and coexistence
- role of soil nutrient availability in structuring tree communities and plant functional traits
- role of wood nutrients as a plant nutrient store in nutrient-poor soil and as a determinant of wood decomposer community composition and decay rate
Education
B.A., 1988, Oxford University
Ph.D., 1992, Cambridge University
Awards and Honors
Delcomyn Professorial Scholar
Visiting Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford
Beaufort Visiting Fellow, St John's College, Cambridge
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Plant Biology
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
External Links
Recent Publications
Mosig, C., Vajna-Jehle, J., Mahecha, M. D., Cheng, Y., Hartmann, H., Montero, D., Junttila, S., Horion, S., Schwenke, M. B., Koontz, M. J., Maulud, K. N. A., Adu-Bredu, S., Al-Halbouni, D., Ali, M., Allen, M., Altman, J., Amorós, L., Angiolini, C., Astrup, R., ... Kattenborn, T. (2026). deadtrees.earth — An open-access and interactive database for centimeter-scale aerial imagery to uncover global tree mortality dynamics. Remote Sensing of Environment, 332, Article 115027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2025.115027
Oliveira, D. N., Ordóñez-Parra, C. A., Chen, S. C., Arnold, A. E., Davis, A. S., González, A. M. T., Morales-Pérez, A. L., Díaz-Castellanos, A. R., Pérez-Enriquez, A., Fidelis, A., Carvalho, A. S. R., Santos, A. S., Sandoval, A. C., Crestani, A. C. V., Mairinck, A. L. A., Neto, A. D. A., Coetzee, A., Traveset, A., Andrade, A. C. S., ... Silveira, F. A. O. (2026). Tropical Seed Trait Database: advancing seed functional ecology in the world's most biodiverse region. New Phytologist, 251(3), 945-958. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.71268
Poschlod, P., Mašková, T., Chen, S. C., Phartyal, S. S., Rosbakh, S., Silveira, F. A. O., Saatkamp, A., Dalling, J. W., Dalziell, E., Dickie, J. B., Fernández-Pascual, E., Guja, L. K., Jiménez-Alfaro, B., Merritt, D. J., Ooi, M. K. J., & Vandelook, F. (2026). A handbook for standardised measurements of plant reproductive traits: from pollen grain to seedling. Australian Journal of Botany, 74(2), Article BT25074. https://doi.org/10.1071/BT25074
Wong, M. Y., Batterman, S. A., Lucas, J. M., Fleischer, K., Ashton, M. S., Bauters, M., Burslem, D. F. R. P., Cushman, K. C., Dalling, J. W., Doetterl, S., Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Fortunel, C., Holm, J. A., Huanca-Nunez, N., Liang, G., Libalah, M. B., Lira-Martins, D., Medina-Vega, J. A., Muller-Landau, H. C., ... Gora, E. M. (2026). Soil fertility controls on tropical forest productivity and mortality: synthesis and roadmap. New Phytologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.71367
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Díaz, S., Rifai, S. W., Corral-Rivas, J. J., Nava-Miranda, M. G., Gonzálezm, R., Hurtadom, A. B., Revilla, N. S., Vilanova, E., Almeida, E., de Oliveira, E. A., Alvarez-Davila, E., Alves, L. F., de Andrade, A. C. S., da Costa, A. C. L., Vieira, S. A., Aragão, L., Arets, E., Aymard, G. A. C., ... Malhi, Y. (2025). Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change. Science, 387(6738), Article eadl5414. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl5414