Identifying the mechanisms that drive the structure and dynamics of communities is a major challenge in ecology. Plant traits are being increasingly used to address this challenge as they provide insights into the critical phenotype-environment link. Such information is necessary to apply to questions regarding how forests are responding to changing environments and the implications of those changes for the long-term persistence of forests. In this talk, I will discuss how the use of trait-based approaches and different modeling tools has allowed me to address questions regarding the drivers that shape forests, and species responses to habitat loss and fragmentation.

View YouTube video of seminar: https://youtu.be/bpnFzlHvSpU