S. Joseph
Wright
A thousand tree species, a thousand vertebrate species, and an uncounted variety of smaller organisms live together in many tropical forests. The challenge posed for ecological theory is irresistible.
Research Focus
I study plant biology in tropical forests. My interests include plant demography, interactions among plants and animals, and relationships between plants, climate and other physical environmental factors. My approaches include forest experiments, comparative studies over natural and artificial gradients, and long-term observational studies coupled with meteorological monitoring. Key questions include how tropical plants time important events such as flowering, leaf development and leaf fall in response to environmental cues and how hundreds of species coexist in small areas of humid tropical forest.
Contact
Research Overview
Why are there so many species of trees in the tropics?
I think we have the answer. Where a tropical tree species is abundant, its juveniles perform poorly. Where the same tree species is rare, its juveniles often thrive. This strong, pervasive, negative density dependence prevents any one species from dominating most tropical forests. The question now is why?
Education
B.A., Princeton University, 1974.
Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles, 1980.
Selected Publications
Wright, SJ and O Calderón. In press. Solar irradiance as the proximate cue for flowering in a tropical moist forest. Biotropica
Usinowicz, J, YY Chen, JS Clark, C Fletcher, NC Garwood, Z Hao, J Johnstone, Y Lin, MR Metz, T Masaki, T Nakashizuka, IF Sun, R Valencia, Y Wang, JK Zimmerman, AR Ives, SJ Wright. 2017. Temporal niches and the latitudinal gradient in forest diversity. Nature doi:10.1038/nature24038
Chen, YY, A Satake, IF Sun, Y Kosugi, M Tani, S Numata, SP Hubbell, C Fletcher, Nur Supardi Md. Noor, SJ Wright. 2017. Species-specific flowering cues among general flowering Shorea species at the Pasoh Research Forest, Malaysia. Journal of Ecology doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12836
Katabuchi, M, SJ Wright, N Swenson, K Feeley, R Condit, SP Hubbell and SJ Davies. 2017. Contrasting outcomes of species- and community-level analyses of the temporal consistency of functional composition. Ecology 98: 2273-2280.
Wright, SJ, O Calderón, A Hernandéz, M Detto, PA Jansen. 2016. Interspecific associations in seed arrival and seedling recruitment in a Neotropical forest. Ecology 97: 2780-2790.
Wright, SJ, IF Sun, M Pickering, CD Fletcher, YY Chen. 2015. Long-term changes in liana loads and tree dynamics in a Malaysian forest. Ecology 96: 2748-2757.
Wright, SJ, JB Yavitt, N Wurzburger, BL Turner, EVJ Tanner, EJ Sayer, LS Santiago, M Kaspari, LO Hedin, KE Harms, MN Garcia and MD Corre. 2011. Potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen limit forest plants growing on a relatively fertile soil in the lowland tropics. Ecology 92: 1616–1625.