My lab uses natural history observations, combined with experimental field and laboratory studies, to better understand the evolution of animal behavior in changing environments. Our research focuses primarily on weakly social bees and fungus-growing ants to understand how environmental,...
My research seeks to optimize the conservation of birds and biodiversity in tropical working landscapes, especially coffee and cocoa growing regions of Latin America. I lead the Smithsonian Bird Friendly® program, which offers a gold standard certification for coffee and cocoa farms that...
Ancient, fossilized grape seeds from Panama, Colombia and Peru, provide perspective on the evolution of plants after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Exploring the tropical peoples
and ecosystems of the past
Research in my lab seeks to understand the processes determining tropical forest biomass, dynamics, plant species composition, and diversity, and their variation within and among sites and over time. The biomass of a forest reflects the interplay of wood production via growth and loss via...
