Kenneth J. Feeley;S. Joseph Wright;Noor Supardi Md. Nor;Abdul Rahman Kassim;Stuart James Davies. 2007. Decelerating growth in tropical forest trees. Ecology Letters 10(1): 461-469.
S. Joseph Wright;G. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa;Carlos Portillo-Quintero;Diane Davies. 2007. Poverty and corruption compromise tropical forest reserves. Ecological Applications 17(5): 1259-1266.
Kathryn E. Stoner;Kevina Vulinec;S. Joseph Wright;Carlos A. Peres. 2007. Hunting and plant community dynamics in tropical forests: A synthesis and future directions. Biotropica 39(3): 385-392.
S. Joseph Wright;Andres Hernandez;Richard S. Condit. 2007. The bushmeat harvest alters seedling banks by favoring lianas, large seeds, and seeds dispersed by bats, birds, and wind. Biotropica 39(3): 363-371.
S. Joseph Wright;Kathryn E. Stoner;Noelle G. Beckman;Richard T. Corlett;Rodolfo Dirzo;Helene C. Muller-Landau;Gabriela Nunez-Iturri;Carlos A. Peres;Benjamin C. Wang. 2007. The plight of large animals in tropical forests and the consequences for plant regeneration. Biotropica 39(3): 289-291.
Gerardo Avalos;Stephen S. Mulkey;Kaoru Kitajima;S. Joseph Wright. 2007. Colonization strategies of two liana species in a tropical dry forest canopy. Biotropica 39(3): 393-399.
Ian J. Wright, David D. Ackerly, Frans Bongers, Kyle E. Harms, Guillermo Ibarra-Manriquez, Miguel Martinez-Ramos, Susan J. Mazer, Helene C. Muller-Landau, Horacio Paz, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Lourens Poorter, Miles R. Silman, Corine F. Vriesendorp, Cam O. Webb, Mark Westoby and S. Joseph Wright. 2007. Relationships Among Ecologically Important Dimensions of Plant Trait Variation in Seven Neotropical Forests. Annals of Botany 99: 1003–1015
Jess K. Zimmerman;S. Joseph Wright;Osvaldo Calderon;M. Aponte Pagan;Steven R. Paton. 2007. Flowering and fruiting phenologies of seasonal and aseasonal Neotropical forests: The role of annual changes in irradiance. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23(2): 231-251.
Queenborough, Simon A.; Metz, Margaret R.; Valencia, Renato; Wright, S. Joseph. 2013. Demographic consequences of chromatic leaf defence in tropical tree communities: do red young leaves increase growth and survival?. Annals of Botany, pp. 1-8
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.
Surviving in a cosexual world: A cost-benefit analysis of dioecy in tropical trees, 2017
Cascading effects of defaunation on the coexistence of two specialized insect seed predators, 2017
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.
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?
B.A., Princeton University, 1974.
Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles, 1980.
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.
