I am a community ecologist with an emphasis on understanding and conserving species interactions, particularly plant-insect (i.e., pollination, herbivory, parasitoidism). I have worked and collaborated on projects in tropical, temperate, and arctic habitats and agroecosystems. My research investigates how agricultural practices reshape species interaction networks and how these networks and …
I have always been fascinated by the extraordinary biodiversity of tropical forests and motivated to understand how these ecosystems can be better protected and restored. During my Master’s degree in Conservation Biology in Italy, I collected acoustic data in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest to assess diversity across old-growth forest patches, …
My research interests lie in community ecology, specifically pollination. Luckily, the neotropics offer a great opportunity to study diverse pollinator communities! For my PhD, I am investigating how plant–pollinator interactions contribute to the recovery of the Ecuadorian Chocó rainforest following agricultural disturbance. Working across the recovery gradient framework of Reassembly, …
What has always fascinated me most about ecology is the complexity of species interactions within ecosystems. How two partners can form close relationships shaping their behaviour, traits and morphology. In my subproject, I study the mutualistic relationships of ants and trees and their effects on forest recovery. Ants play an …
The paper led by Arianna Tartara explored the process by which fallen leaves are broken down to recycle nutrients back into the forest, recovers after disturbance in Ecuador’s lowland Chocó. Studying sites ranging from active cacao plantations to regenerating secondary forests and old-growth forest, they found that decomposition follows a …
In our recent paper lead by Nina Grella and colleagues, we tackled a fundamental question in ecology: when a tropical forest recovers from disturbance, what determines which ant and termite species end up where, is it simply that some species can’t reach certain areas, or is it that the habitat …
Our first synthesis on phylogenetics was published! In the words of the first author “in this study on the recovery of phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic community structure, we found that early regenerating habitats do not necessarily harbour closely related species that are later replaced by distantly related ones during late …
¡Nuestro cuarto boletín en su versión en español está disponible! En este número reflexionamos sobre los cuatro años de la primera etapa del proyecto, lo que también marca el cierre de varios proyectos así como la última contribución al boletín de varios de nuestros miembro. Los invitamos a leerlo para …
Gunnar Brehm and collaborators have published the first systematic inventory of 330 species of tiger and lichen moths (subfamily Arctiinae, family Erebidae) from the Ecuadorian Chocó. They combined field sampling, DNA barcoding, and phylogenetic analyses to assess species diversity, taxonomic knowledge, and evolutionary relationships. Their results show that only approximately …
In a new contribution, Ugo Diniz and collaborators reveal that tiger moths, often overlooked in pollination research, play a key role as floral visitors. These moths, a highly diverse and abundant group, visit many different plant species, especially those from pioneer plant groups. Even after 40 years of natural forest …
