Projects
Drs. Carol Garzon (Fondazione Edmund Mach), Patrick Jansen (Wageningen University), Helene Muller-Landau (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, STRI) and Joseph Wright (STRI), and Beckman are quantifying observed spatial distributions of seed predation by a host-specific bruchid beetle and resulting survivorship of palm seeds in Panama.
To understand whether we can infer long-term coexistence from short-term experiments, Drs. Dybzinksi (Loyola University), Tilman (University of Minnesota), and Beckman are investigating how predictions of coexistence from models parameterized with plant-soil feedback experiments compare to observations from a long-term controlled competition experiment of grass species.
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Drs. Zhou, Timofeyev, and Beckman are developing models to examine species extinction under climate extremes.
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Drs. Sabree and Beckman are investigating the influence of nitgrogen availability on the diversity of gut microbiota in a model omnivore.
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Dr. Beckman and collaborators are quantifying patterns of functional diversity and turnover of co-occuring plant species in a temperate forest to infer the role of land-use change relative to phylogeny and ecological processes (e.g. dispersal, resource-based competition, specialized natural enemies) in community assembly (Krishnadas et al., in prep.).
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Drs. Jenny Zambrano, Noelle G. Beckman, Carol Garzon, and Claire Fortunel are examining whether habitat fragmentation drives tropical forests towards functional homogenization.