Strategic conservation and resilience
In December 2022, the United Nations agreed to one of the most ambitious goals in human history – to designate 30% of the land for nature protection by 2030, the “30 × 30 goal”. But where will all of these new protected areas be located, given that so much of the world is already ecologically degraded and/or being used to support a growing human population? Simultaneously providing for the protection of existing biodiversity, connectivity between conservation areas, the restoration of degraded ecosystems, and the provisioning of human well-being is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. It can only be addressed with substantial data and advances in quantitative modeling. Work in our lab addresses these challenges - trying to develop optimal and holistic conservation strategies that include nature and people through conservation areas, habitat corridors, and sustainable harvest strategies, all directed towards maintaining or increasing the resilience of social-ecological systems.
Selected recent publications on this topic
Selected recent publications on this topic
Taking the pulse of tropical forests
Limiting the near-term impacts of climatic and other global changes depends on understanding the resilience of ecosystems to altered environmental conditions. We need to monitor the "vital signs" of the ecosystem so that we can prescribe precise conservation actions. Our lab is developing "whole-system" monitoring of the world's most diverse ecosystems: tropical rainforests. We monitor terrestrial mammals with camera traps, birds, frogs, and insects with acoustic sensors, forest phenology with drones and seed traps, and the dynamics of trees and lianas with adult and seedling demography plots. This allows us to assess linkages between climatic, tree dynamics, and animal abundance and diversity - thus keeping tabs on the vital signs of the ecosystem.
Selected recent publications on this topic
Selected recent publications on this topic
Evolution & ecology of species interactions
All species interact with the other organisms around them, but ecologists have surprisingly limited understanding of how these interactions structure communities and drive the evolution of lineages. On the one hand, the vast array of fleshy fruit types that tropical trees have evolved suggest that, at some level, seed dispersal is clearly important; moreover, we know that many trees suffer demographically when their seed dispersing animals are lost. But on the other hand, certain tree species may persist for millennia after their dispersers vanish, and other species display no apparent ill effects in ecological time when deprived of their dispersers. As a way to assess the demographic and evolutionary importance of seed dispersal, we take advantage of the unique biogeography of insular Southeast Asia, assessing the evolutionary and ecological importance of vertebrates for tropical tree demography, community dynamics, and trait evolution. We combine large-scale natural experiments with smaller-scale controlled manipulations and quantitative modeling of demography and community dynamics. We study the same tree taxa in similar climates and forest types, but exposed to very different animal assemblages, to assess whether and how fruit traits have changed in response to seed disperser assemblages.
Selected recent publications on this topic
Selected recent publications on this topic
Connectivity and ecological meta-communities
In a world where natural habitats are increasingly fragmented, we need to ensure dispersal and connectivity among the remnant patches in order to reduce biodiversity losses. A common way to do this is by protecting "habitat corridors" that link national parks and other conservation areas into networks. But how do we figure out where corridors are most urgently needed? Which of the many possible corridors are the most important in order to support species, ecological communities, and meta-communities? This topic is interesting from a basic science perspective, as a fusion of meta-community theory and landscape ecology could greatly enhance our understanding of spatial ecology. Clearly the topic also has major conservation applications.
Selected recent publications on this topic
Selected recent publications on this topic
Sustainability of vertebrate exploitation
Over-harvest is one of the most serious threats to tropical vertebrates worldwide. “Bushmeat” hunting has reduced or eliminated mammals and birds in many areas, leading to "empty forests" that are structurally intact but lack large animals. Indeed, hunting rates of large vertebrates across the tropics are almost always unsustainable. This negatively impacts more than just the hunted animals themselves. Many tropical plants depend on vertebrate animals for pollination or seed dispersal; the loss of these animals also deprives humans living in these forests of food and culturally significant icons. Overhunted forests can even undergo slow and subtle changes in tree and liana species composition such that they store less carbon. We are working to combine modern wildlife management techniques with traditional ecological knowledge to generate "win-win-win" situations where forest animals prosper, human livelihoods are ensured, and ecosystem carbon storage is optimized. This involves collaborating with hunters in remote villages, ecological field work, and demographic simulations to optimize the sustainability of hunting strategies.
Selected recent publications on this topic
Selected recent publications on this topic