A recording of this online seminar is available to view HERE

Speaker:  Dr Frederick Draper, Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, Arizona State University / University of Leeds

The forests of Amazonia are among the most biodiverse plant communities on Earth. Given the immediate threats posed by climate and land-use change, an improved understanding of how this extraordinary biodiversity is spatially organized is urgently required to develop effective conservation strategies. Most Amazonian tree species are extremely rare but a few are common across the region. Indeed, just 227 ‘hyperdominant’ species account for >50% of all individuals >10 cm diameter. Yet, the degree to which the phenomenon of hyperdominance is sensitive to tree size, the extent to which the composition of dominant species changes with size class and how evolutionary history constrains tree hyperdominance, all remain unknown. In this talk Freddie explores these themes using data from ‘RedGentry’, a new collaborative network of 1200 forest plots distributed across Amazonia, that includes all woody stems > 2.5 cm.

Freddie is a Marie Curie research fellow working jointly in the Ecology and Global Change group at the University of Leeds and the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science at Arizona State University. He completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in tropical forest ecology in 2016, and has subsequently held postdoc positions at Carnegie Institution for Science and Florida International University. His research is focused on understanding tropical tree diversity across spatial scales using a range of approaches, but particularly remote sensing and field-based floristic inventory.