Some community ecology and tree mortality in tropical forests

I will present my work and collaborations, in three main phases or lines. My first line of research is the study of species dominance, mostly linked to the “oligarchy hypothesis” in Andean and Amazonian forests in the Madidi region in Bolivia. The oligarchy hypothesis emphasizes predictability and practicality, leaving aside the mystery of hyper-diversity in tropical forests. We have studied how dominance (at the beta scale) changes in the Madidi across scales, across species, and environmental heterogeneity. My second line of research is tree mortality, at pantropical scales. I worked on the design and implementation of the annual mortality surveys of the Forest Global Earth Observatory. My colleagues in the tropics have gathered lots of comparable data, and we are starting to get interesting results, including a preliminary ranking of the most prevalent, lethal, and impactful factors associated with tree death. Lastly, I am paying attention to the process of collaboration per se. I will give an overview of the Alliance for Tropical Forest Science – a “network of networks” that promotes large-scale collaborations in a variety of topics. We hope to find better ways to balance different incentives and needs, data openness, and fairness in scientific collaborations.

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