Contact Information
505 S. Goodwin Ave
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Areas
Research Description
Tropical forest dynamics, plant-soil and plant-fungal interactions, seed ecology
My research concerns the population and community ecology of tropical forests, with a particular interest in understanding how soil nutrient availability and soil microbial communities shape the composition and diversity of tree communities. Much of my work is carried out with collaborators at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where I am a Research Associate Scientist. My work is carried out principally on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Watershed, or at the Fortuna Forest Reserve and Volcan Barú in western Panama where I established and maintain a network of forest dynamics plots that encompass a wide range of soil nutrient availabilities and elevation (700-3200m).
Current projects explore:
- seed-infecting fungi as a model system for understanding how plant-pathogen interactions and plant defense traits influence abundance and coexistence
- role of soil nutrient availability in structuring tree communities and plant functional traits
- role of wood nutrients as a plant nutrient store in nutrient-poor soil and as a determinant of wood decomposer community composition and decay rate
Education
B.A., 1988, Oxford University
Ph.D., 1992, Cambridge University
Awards and Honors
Delcomyn Professorial Scholar
Visiting Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford
Beaufort Visiting Fellow, St John's College, Cambridge
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Plant Biology
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
External Links
Recent Publications
Law, S., Flores-Moreno, H., Cheesman, A. W., Clement, R., Rosenfield, M., Yatsko, A., Cernusak, L. A., Dalling, J. W., Canam, T., Iqsaysa, I. A., Duan, E. S., Allison, S. D., Eggleton, P., & Zanne, A. E. (2023). Wood traits explain microbial but not termite-driven decay in Australian tropical rainforest and savanna. Journal of Ecology, 111(5), 982-993. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14090
Seyfried, G. S., Corrales, A., Kent, A. D., Dalling, J. W., & Yang, W. (2023). Watershed-scale Variation in Potential Fungal Community Contributions to Ectomycorrhizal Biogeochemical Syndromes. Ecosystems, 26(4), 724-739. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00788-z
Waite, C. E., van der Heijden, G. M. F., Field, R., Burslem, D. F. R. P., Dalling, J. W., Nilus, R., Rodríguez-Ronderos, M. E., Marshall, A. R., & Boyd, D. S. (2023). Landscape-scale drivers of liana load across a Southeast Asian forest canopy differ to the Neotropics. Journal of Ecology, 111(1), 77-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14015
Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, J., Berenguer, E., Oliveras Menor, I., Bauman, D., Corral-Rivas, J. J., Nava-Miranda, M. G., Both, S., Ndong, J. E., Ondo, F. E., Bengone, N. N., Mihinhou, V., Dalling, J. W., Heineman, K., Figueiredo, A., González-M, R., Norden, N., Hurtado-M, A. B., González, D., Salgado-Negret, B., ... Malhi, Y. (2022). Functional susceptibility of tropical forests to climate change. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6(7), 878-889. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01747-6
Bauters, M., Grau, O., Doetterl, S., Heineman, K. D., Dalling, J. W., Prada, C. M., Griepentrog, M., Malhi, Y., Riutta, T., Scalon, M., Oliveras, I., Inagawa, T., Majalap, N., Beeckman, H., Van den Bulcke, J., Perring, M. P., Dourdain, A., Hérault, B., Vermeir, P., ... Janssens, I. A. (2022). Tropical wood stores substantial amounts of nutrients, but we have limited understanding why. Biotropica, 54(3), 596-606. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.13069