I’m an Associate Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After completing my B.A. at Oxford University, I did my doctoral dissertation research at Cambridge University with field work in montane forest in Jamaica. In 1992 I moved to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and was based at the Barro Colorado Island research station until I arrived in Urbana in 2000.

My research is in the community ecology of tropical trees, with a particular interest in understanding processes that determine the abundance and distribution patterns of pioneer species. Some of my current projects look at: 

• seed dispersal, seed germination and the importance of recruitment limitation to pioneer regeneration

• importance of fungal pathogens in the dynamics of soil seed banks

• the role of herbivores in shaping the local distribution of pioneers in relation to light, and

• role of edaphic factors influencing forest structure and dynamics.

Much of my work is based in Panama, and at large permanent forest plots throughout the tropics coordinated by the Center for Tropical Forest Science.