Research highlights
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Beyond Trees: Building a Community for Better Forests
At the 62ⁿᵈ Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, we will launch the Beyond Trees research initiative through our symposium: Beyond Trees: A More Inclusive Growth-Form Perspective on Ecology and Society in Tropical Landscapes. Beyond Trees is a research community dedicated to understanding, celebrating, and advancing the study…
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Grassy Trees: Transitional Solutions in a Transitioning World
Cover Illustration: Maryam Lootah for Washington Square News Our recent paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution highlights a group of plants that has long occupied a blind spot in forest ecology. Large enough to reach the canopy like trees, yet fast-growing and anatomically more similar to grasses, bamboos, bananas, palms, and many…
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The bamboo enigma: the story of a weird grass
How did a suicidal grass outcompete trees and dominate forest canopies? Simple mathematical models put different pieces together into one picture. Bamboo is known for its rapid expansion in forests and extensive monospecific stands, which prevent tree regeneration and arrest succession, thereby impacting forest structure, carbon dynamics, and biodiversity. However, it…