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About me

I am interested in understanding how tropical forests maintain their extraordinary biodiversity, with a focus on plant ecology, plant–animal interactions, and regeneration dynamics. My research looks closely at the early life stages of trees, especially seedlings, as a way to uncover the processes that shape community assembly. I combine long-term monitoring, experiments, and functional trait data, considering both above and belowground traits, to reveal how demographic trade-offs and plant interactions influence survival and coexistence. More recently, I am focusing also on AI approaches that combine imagery, hyperspectral reflectance, and species descriptions to accelerate seedling identification and scale trait–demography frameworks for forest restoration.

Research

Dispersal and Seed rain-Successional Feedbacks:

Conspecific density dependence and species interactions

Functional traits and demographic trade-offs

Emerging approaches: AI, seedling ID and forest function