Research Areas: 
Ecology of neotropical pioneers

Over the last ten years we have been examining how seed and seedling characteristics influence recruitment success, habitat requirements, and competitive interactions among pioneer species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Our current work concerns seed germination ecology, determinants of seed persistence in the soil, and plant-fungal interactions. In a collaboration with Rachel Gallery (Oxford University) and Betsy Arnold (University of Arizona) we are looking the diversity, biogeography, evolutionary relationships and life-histories (mutualistic; pathogenic; saprobic) of communities of seed-infecting fungi that are found associated with Cecropia seeds across the range of this genus of pioneer trees in Central and South America.