Contact Information
505 S. Goodwin Ave
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Areas
Research Description
Tropical forest dynamics, plant-soil and plant-fungal interactions, seed ecology
My research concerns the population and community ecology of tropical forests, with a particular interest in understanding how soil nutrient availability and soil microbial communities shape the composition and diversity of tree communities. Much of my work is carried out with collaborators at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where I am a Research Associate Scientist. My work is carried out principally on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Watershed, or at the Fortuna Forest Reserve and Volcan Barú in western Panama where I established and maintain a network of forest dynamics plots that encompass a wide range of soil nutrient availabilities and elevation (700-3200m)
Current projects explore:
- seed-infecting fungi as a model system for understanding how plant-pathogen interactions and plant defense traits influence abundance and coexistence
- role of soil nutrient availability in structuring tree communities and plant functional traits
- role of wood nutrients as a plant nutrient store in nutrient-poor soil and as a determinant of wood decomposer community composition and decay rate
Education
B.A., 1988, Oxford University
Ph.D., 1992, Cambridge University
Awards and Honors
Delcomyn Professorial Scholar
Visiting Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford
Beaufort Visiting Fellow, St John's College, Cambridge
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Plant Biology
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
External Links
Recent Publications
Brearley, F. Q., Argüelles-Moyao, A., Dalling, J. W., Metz, M. R., Powers, J. S., & da Silva, I. R. (2026). Fungi in Tropical Ecosystems: Introduction to a Special Issue. Biotropica, 58(6), Article e70294. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.70294
Ferrer, A., Martin, B., Corrales, A., & Dalling, J. W. (2026). Distinct root-associated fungal communities may account for the persistence of Podocarpus conifers in tropical forest. Ecology, 107(9), Article e70519. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70519
McCulloch, L. A., Arnold, A. E., Dalling, J. W., Davis, A., Sarmiento, C., & Zalamea, P. C. (Accepted/In press). Dormancy type, seed traits, and species identity shape seed-associated fungal community composition in tropical pioneer trees. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.71601
Mosig, C., Vajna-Jehle, J., Mahecha, M. D., Cheng, Y., Hartmann, H., Montero, D., Junttila, S., Horion, S., Schwenke, M. B., Koontz, M. J., Maulud, K. N. A., Adu-Bredu, S., Al-Halbouni, D., Ali, M., Allen, M., Altman, J., Amorós, L., Angiolini, C., Astrup, R., ... Kattenborn, T. (2026). deadtrees.earth — An open-access and interactive database for centimeter-scale aerial imagery to uncover global tree mortality dynamics. Remote Sensing of Environment, 332, Article 115027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2025.115027
Oliveira, D. N., Ordóñez-Parra, C. A., Chen, S. C., Arnold, A. E., Davis, A. S., González, A. M. T., Morales-Pérez, A. L., Díaz-Castellanos, A. R., Pérez-Enriquez, A., Fidelis, A., Carvalho, A. S. R., Santos, A. S., Sandoval, A. C., Crestani, A. C. V., Mairinck, A. L. A., Neto, A. D. A., Coetzee, A., Traveset, A., Andrade, A. C. S., ... Silveira, F. A. O. (2026). Tropical Seed Trait Database: advancing seed functional ecology in the world's most biodiverse region. New Phytologist, 251(3), 945-958. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.71268