Vita

I am interested in understanding how ecological communities and the functions they perform recover, particularly in tropical forests. In particular, I am drawn to the reciprocity between plant-animal mutualisms and the plant community: how these interactions shape plant community recovery, and how, in turn, that recovery reshapes the pollination and seed dispersal functions that depend on it.
During my PhD at Senckenberg, carried out as part of the first phase of the Reassembly Project, I investigated how seed-dispersal interaction networks recover along a chronosequence of forest regeneration after deforestation, and what this means for plant regeneration. Moving forward, I aim to expand this work beyond a single interaction type, looking for cross-taxa patterns in how plant and animal communities — and the mutualisms that connect them — recover after disturbance, and what this means for restoration in tropical forests more broadly.

Keywords:
Community ecology, mutualistic interactions, ecological networks, ecosystem functioning, restoration ecology